Holding Fast To Christ -Together [Life Group Sunday]

Good morning, church family.

My name is Mark Richardson.

I'm gonna read our scripture passage from Hebrews chapter three verses twelve through fourteen.

And you can find that starting in 1002 in your Bibles and the chairs in front of you.

Hebrews chapter 3, verses 12 through 14.

Hebrews 3:12–14

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.

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

This is the word of the Lord.

Past couple weeks, anyone who gets up to read scripture gets 50, 60 million verses, Mark gets three.

But what we lack in quantity, we make up for in quality, amen?

It's great to be with you this morning.

My name's Chad.

I'm one of your elders, and I have the privilege of bringing God's word to you this morning.

Uh it's been really hot lately, right?

And uh this past week was a lot cooler by comparison.

We woke up this morning, it was raining, and so it's kind of starting to feel a little bit like Christmas, right?

Is it is it Labor Day?

Is it Christmas?

Who can tell?

I don't know.

So I thought we'd begin this morning by looking at Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol.

Right?

What what what better than the Christmas carol in the middle of uh September?

Uh this is a this is a story that is has really withstood the test of time, and it's been adapted more times than anybody could reasonably count.

Those of a certain age will remember George C.

Scott, he's been Scrooge.

Bill Murray has been Scrooge.

Jim Carey has been Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck, which feels almost too obvious, uh, has played Scrooge.

Um, even the Muppets.

Michael Caine and the Muppets have taken a run at it.

And most of us know this story, right?

This should be familiar to most of you.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a man who spent years building his life around things like money and isolation and protecting himself.

He's pushed away nearly anybody in his life who tried to love him.

He dismisses things like generosity as foolishness.

He treats the needs of other people as an inconvenience, as something he can't be bothered with.

He's become so accustomed to his own hardness that he no longer recognizes it as hardness.

Then, on Christmas Eve of all days, Scrooge receives an unexpected visitor, the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley.

Now, Marley comes carrying big, heavy change that he forged through a lifetime of selfishness.

And he's come to show Scrooge what he wished he had learned, where the road that he's traveling, that Scrooge is traveling, is eventually going to lead him.

Now, Scrooge doesn't initially welcome this warning.

He questions it, he dismisses it, he tries to explain it away, but Marley refuses to flatter him.

Scrooge has to see the truth about the life that he's chosen and the person that he's become.

The warning is frightening, but its purpose is mercy.

At the end of the story, Scrooge falls to his knees and he says this quote.

He says, Why show me all this if I'm past all hope?

But Scrooge isn't past all hope.

Marley comes because there's time for Scrooge to respond.

Over the course of that night, Scrooge is forced to see what he could not, or maybe what he would not, see about himself.

He sees those wounds in his past.

He sees the suffering that's around him in the present.

And he sees the future towards which his life is moving.

And because the warning reaches him in time, he changes direction.

Scrooge awakens to a life of generosity, to a life of joy and restored relationships.

The man who had pushed everybody away begins opening his life to others.

The story that began with a hard-hearted man saying, Bah humbug, ends with Tiny Tim saying, God bless us everyone.

So sometimes the most loving thing someone can do is tell us the truth while our hearts can still hear it.

Hebrews 3 gives the church a similar warning.

We don't have ghosts and crazy stories, but it tells us that sin can deceive us.

It tells us that hearts can gradually, if we're not careful, our hearts can become hardened.

And it tells us that people can actually turn away slowly from the living God who gives them life.

Sometimes they do this without even recognizing what's happening to them.

Now the passage doesn't just warn us about the danger, but it tells us that God has given us other believers who can help us to understand what's happening, who can help us to hear his voice, to recognize what's going on in our lives, and to continue trusting Jesus while it's still called today.

Because sin can quietly teach us to distrust God.

God graciously gives us each other to help us hold firmly to Christ until the end.

And so what we'll see today is the passage unfolds neatly in three movements.

We have the danger, we have the provision, and we have the goal.

So let's begin by taking a look at the danger.

In the first verse, the author of Hebrew writes this: He says, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

Those are strong words, right?

Evil.

Unbelieving.

Fall away.

This is not the sort of verse that you find embroidered on a throw pillow while you're shopping at Hobby Lobby.

I mean, can you imagine walking into grandma's sewing room and seeing this?

Oh no, where'd it go?

Oh.

Yeah, there you go.

That would be concerning.

But all kidding aside, Hebrews is warning us about something that's very, very serious.

A heart can gradually stop trusting God and can eventually turn away from him.

And to understand this warning, we need to understand the setting.

Just before the verses that Mark read for us, Hebrews quotes Psalm 95.

And this is a psalm that summons the Israel to worship the Lord.

And it recounts how God is a great God.

He made the sea, he made the land, he cares for his people.

And then almost without warning, in the middle of the Psalm, it changes direction.

And it says, Today, if only you would listen.

The sentence leads forward almost like it's anticipating a response.

The psalmist remembers Israel's failure in the wilderness.

They had seen God humble the mightiest nation in the world, Egypt.

They had seen that.

They had witnessed that.

They saw God divide the Red Sea and they walked through on dry ground.

They saw that.

They saw God provide for them in miraculous ways.

But whenever water ran short, whenever food was scarce, whenever enemies appeared too strong, they responded as though God could not be trusted.

And the God whom Psalm 95 summons us to worship is precisely the God that Israel has to learn to trust.

And what we learn here is that it's possible to sing of God as a great king, like we did today, but at the same time, you're responding to hardship as though he is neither great nor trustworthy.

Now, their unbelief is not the same thing as atheism.

They knew very well that God existed.

They watched the sea divide.

They ate bread that he provided.

They could tell the story of his deliverance because it was their story.

They lived it.

But knowing that God exists is not the same thing as entrusting ourselves to him.

Whenever trusting God became costly for them, Egypt started to look like a lot safer place than following God forward.

Egypt had enslaved them.

Egypt had oppressed them.

But it was familiar.

The wilderness was frightening.

And God didn't always lead them in ways that made sense, in ways that they understood.

And that's the strange power of unbelief.

It can make the bondage that's behind us look safer than the God who's before us.

Now, I want to be clear: an unbelieving heart is not the same thing as asking God honest questions.

What I'm not talking about here is the Christian who's walking through a period of doubt, you know, crying things like, God, I don't understand what you're doing.

Some of Scripture's most faithful prayers rise from our confusion and from our pain.

How long, O Lord, have you forgotten me?

Why are you so far from saving me?

Those are hurting people, but the difference is those are hurting people who are still bringing their hurt to God.

So there's a difference between struggling to trust God and slowly becoming less responsive to Him.

Sometimes faith is a trembling hand that reaches out through the darkness.

It says, God, I don't understand.

I'm frightened.

I'm disappointed.

But I'm still here.

I'm listening.

Help me to trust you.

That might be bruised, exhausted faith.

It can barely find the words, but it's still turned towards God, and that's appropriate.

The danger begins when our pain gradually starts to turn us away from God's voice.

The hardship may be real.

The diagnosis you receive from the doctor may be real.

The loss you've experienced could be devastating.

The prayer, the good, faithful prayer that you've prayed for years, you know, may have gone unanswered for years.

Hebrews is not asking us to pretend otherwise.

Biblical faith is not a failure to acknowledge reality.

But these circumstances, brothers and sisters, can rewrite what we believe about God.

We interpret what happens to us sometimes as though he's no longer good or present or trustworthy.

And that can be a problem.

Gradually we become we become less willing to be open, less willing to be corrected, less inclined to bring our pain to God, the only person who can actually deal with our pain.

So we may still attend church, we stay mil, we may still open our Bibles, we stay, may still act the way that we need to act and do the things that we need to do.

But while we're singing about God's faithfulness, we're quietly arranging our lives as though He's not faithful.

And that Mission Hills Church is how a heart begins to harden.

Now notice the address in this verse.

It says, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you.

The command is plural, but the concern is individual.

All of us need to watch to make sure this does not happen to any one of us.

Hebrews does not allow us to dismiss another person's spiritual drift as though it were a private matter.

Now, this kind of departure from God, this kind of hard-heartedness that settles in, it rarely comes with a public announcement.

No one wakes up one day and declares to everyone, you know what I'm going to do today is I'm going to turn away from the living God.

A painful circumstance arises in our lives and it gives rise to this subtle doubt about God.

That lie starts to produce distrust.

And that distrust starts to express itself in disobedience.

And gradually, progressively, the heart becomes less responsive, and withdrawal from God and from the community of believers begins to feel normal.

So what sometimes we observe as a sudden departure may have been developing beneath the surface for years.

Israel heard God's voice.

Israel saw his works.

Hardening can happen while our Bibles remain open and our songs remain loud, and deception can keep us from recognizing it in ourselves.

So, what do we do?

What has God given us to protect us from that gradual hardening?

How does he care for us while we can still hear his voice?

Well, the answer comes in verse 13.

God doesn't merely warn us about the danger, he gives us a communal provision against it.

He says, but exhort one another every day as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Notice the contrast.

An unbelieving heart can develop in any one of us.

God's safeguard is not merely greater private determination.

The author of Hebrews does not say, you know what you need to do is you just need to try harder.

You need to just be better.

You just need to dig deeper.

He says, no.

Exhort one another.

Now, exhort is not a word that we use very much in our common vernacular.

And so sometimes we hear exhort, and what we hear is spiritual pep talk.

You can do it.

But the biblical term is much deeper and it's much richer.

It means things like encourage, urge, appeal, comfort, confront, come alongside.

And this breath matters because people don't always need the same thing.

The discouraged may need to hear, hang in there, God has not abandoned you.

The confused may need truth.

The grieving may just need patient presence.

The person beginning to drift may need someone to say, I'm concerned about where all this is taking you.

Biblical exhortation listens carefully enough to bring God's truth to another person in their actual need.

Sometimes it's a word that confronts, sometimes it warns or reminds or pleads, but it always, always, always comes alongside with the truth that is needed to faithfully respond to God.

And this command belongs to the entire church.

Again, the author of Hughes does not say here, make sure the pastor exhorts everyone, make sure the elders exhort everyone.

No, it doesn't say that.

Every believer needs to receive this ministry, and every believer is called to offer this ministry.

None of us is only a provider, and none of us is only a consumer.

Why?

Like, why is this necessary?

Well, the end of the verse tells us, it says, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Sin deceives us.

We often think of sin, when I use the term sin, what probably comes to mind for you is something like breaking God's law.

And it certainly is that.

But the scripture also describes sin as a power that works against us.

Sin crouches at the door.

Sin's desire is for us.

It enslaves.

Sin reigns.

And here Hebrews tells us that sin deceives.

Sin is one of those great enemies that runs through the biblical story alongside of death and the devil.

And it rarely approaches with an obvious rejection of God.

It works very, very subtly, right?

It distorts our vision.

It rearranges what appears reasonable.

Eventually, what is actually itself deadly starts to look life-giving.

And the God who gives life suddenly becomes to appear as though he's untrustworthy.

Sin is not merely content to entice our behavior, it reshapes our perceptions.

Because sin's lies are believable, they're attractive, and they're fitted to whatever it is we're experiencing.

Sin has this way of finding that tendered place in your heart that's created by fear or anxiety or disappointment or desire or pain.

And it offers you this explanation that kind of explains everything.

It sounds really good.

But sin's a liar.

Sin lies to us about God.

Says things like, He's withholding something good from you.

God doesn't want what's best for you.

He can't be trusted with this part of your life.

Sin also lies to us about ourselves.

I'm sorry, about itself.

It'll say things like, This thing that I'm enticing you to do, it's going to satisfy you.

It's going to make your life better.

It's going to make you free.

But trust me, it's harmless.

Try it.

Sin lies about us.

It says, you're the exception.

You're different.

You understand the situation better than anybody else.

You don't need correction.

What do those people know?

They don't care about you.

And ultimately, sin lies about its consequences.

Nothing serious is going to happen, but just do it.

You have everything under control.

You're fine.

Don't worry about it.

By the way, even if it's a bad, you can always deal with it later, right?

Sin deceives us not by falsifying our circumstances, but by teaching us to interpret real circumstances as though God were absent, weak, or untrustworthy.

And that's exactly what happened to the nation of Israel.

Their thirst, their hunger, their enemies, the fortified cities, it was all real.

But those dangers began to determine what they believed about God.

Their thirst suggested to them, God doesn't care about me.

Their hunger made them think he couldn't or wouldn't provide.

Sin taught them to see the God who had delivered them as either unable or unwilling to lead them home.

And here's the problem.

When I'm being deceived, I may be the least qualified person to recognize it.

The lie fits my pain, right?

It explains my disappointment.

The lie justifies my response.

So sin invites me to make my pain the final word about God.

And that is precisely why he gives us one another.

Sometimes we need somebody who's outside of our pain who can help us see what our pain has made difficult to see.

Has anybody ever seen this before?

Think about the check engine light on your car.

You're cruising down the freeway, everything's great.

You got your music's on, you know, windows roll down, wind blowing through your hair, and then the light comes on.

But but my car's running normally.

There's no smoke.

There's no clinking or clanking or no terrifying noises coming out from under the hood, so surely that's nothing, right?

Like, I don't need to pay attention to that.

It's probably the gas cap is loose, right?

Like, that's probably why it's on.

I'm sure it'll turn off by itself.

It's probably like a loose wire or something, right?

And what happens is after a while, you're so accustomed you barely notice the check engine light is still on.

But meanwhile, under the hood, beneath the surface, something horrible is happening.

Hardening is this gradual process by which we as Christians learn to live with the check engine light on.

The heart grows hard as it repeatedly hears God's voice and continues without responding.

So the person whose spiritual warning light has come.

On believes the explanation since it's applied.

I'm just tired.

Withdrawing is easier.

Nobody understands me.

I can address it later.

This isn't really disobedience.

Now, another believer may see what's going on and they might gently say, Hey Chad, I've noticed something changing in you.

You don't seem like yourself.

Is everything okay?

You sound like you're starting to believe something about God that isn't true.

Can we talk about what's happening in your heart?

That's mutual exhortation.

And this mutual exhortation is what I call preventative grace.

This is God placing people in our lives who can notice the warning signs and who can speak to us while our hearts are still able to hear.

The author says we should do this every day, as long as it's called today.

Now, he's not requiring daily church attendance, so don't get nervous if you think that's where that's going.

Today, this today language again comes from Psalm 95.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

It is the present opportunity to hear God and to respond to God, before the warning light becomes part of the scenery and your withdrawal becomes total departure.

So, the encouragement is for us to speak today because sin is at work today.

Encourage today because hearts are being shaped today.

Help one another hear God's voice today because tomorrow's responsiveness should not be presumed upon.

Something that's really important to share here.

I've seen it go overboard, and I want to be very clear.

What I'm saying here does not give us permission to become spiritual detectives or to demand access to the deepest, darkest, most embarrassing parts of strangers' souls.

That is not community.

That's creepy and weird.

Biblical vulnerability is not this indiscriminate disclosure.

Not everyone is entitled to every detail of your life.

Even in the church.

Some of us have opened our hearts and been met with things like judgment, gossip, or easy answers.

And if that's happened to you, I'm sorry.

But it makes sense that being known feels frightening, right?

Trust should be offered wisely and built slowly.

Wise boundaries are different from being completely hidden, though.

The invitation is not to tell everything to everyone, but it is to let a few trustworthy people know enough to recognize when discouragement is becoming distrust or pain is pulling us away from God.

Now, those of us who would exhort must proceed with humility.

We listen before we speak.

We ask rather than accuse, and we protect what's entrusted to us.

We don't share it.

We have to be trustworthy.

We approach as fellow strugglers who also need grace, right?

Sometimes love speaks a difficult truth, asks a careful question, or simply remains present.

When we seek to exhort one another, exhortation is not the same thing as control.

It's patient, courageous love that helps another person remain faithful and responsive to God.

Now, relations like this don't happen overnight.

Relationships like this grow through repeated presence, careful listening, confidentiality, ordinary acts of care.

Over time, I learn your story enough to notice when it changes.

And you get to know me enough, you recognize my voice.

You learn my noise, you know my voice well enough to know that what I offer you is concern and not condemnation.

And this responsibility is mutual.

I am not assigned to diagnose everyone else.

I am just as capable of being deceived as anyone else, maybe more so.

And so I need people who love me enough to notice.

And I need to love others enough to notice them.

That's community.

But community is not the goal of this passage.

Being known and encouraged are gifts God uses for something that's greater.

Verse 14 tells us what the greater goal is.

It says, For if we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

This word fork connects this verse to everything that proceeds before it.

And that's important.

We take hardening seriously and we exhort one another because we have come to share in Christ.

And those who share in Christ hold their confidence in him until the very end.

Now, sharing in Christ means more than just knowing facts, believing facts about Jesus.

It means more than just asking him to improve our lives.

It describes people who share in Christ Himself.

And then through Him we share in salvation and the promised future that He has secured for His people.

The good news of the gospel is not merely that Jesus offers us forgiveness or peace or purpose or a more satisfying life.

Those are precious gifts of grace, to be sure, but the greatest gift of the gospel is Christ Himself.

And this is the Christ that the entire book of Hebrews places before us.

If you read through the book of Hebrews, you'll hear him describe like this: He's the Son through whom God has spoken.

He is the one who made purification for our sins.

He is our merciful and faithful high priest.

He is the one who has suffered and was tempted and is able to help us when we're tempted.

He is the one who will lead his people into God's promised rest.

Jesus, this Jesus is far more than the supplier of religious benefits.

He himself is the treasure toward whom the entire letter directs us.

If I were to say it one way, the goal of the Christian life is Christ.

But the author of Hebrews adds here a condition.

He says, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, and we have to let that condition speak.

We can't just rush over it.

The warning is real.

Perseverance is not an optional feature for unusually committed Christians.

Hebrews will not let us say things like, I once expressed faith, so whether I continue trusting Christ or not, doesn't really matter.

Now, at the same time, we don't earn participation in Christ through sufficient effort.

The sentence begins, we have come to share in Christ.

Christ has acted, saved, and brought us into fellowship with himself.

That is work that he did.

This idea of perseverance does not purchase our place in Christ, it reveals the reality of our participation with him.

Grace doesn't make perseverance necessary.

Grace makes perseverance possible.

One way God's preserving grace reaches us is through this community around us.

Community is precious not because it's the goal, but because God uses community to help us to hold firmly to Christ.

God preserves his people through the promise that comfort, warnings that awaken our heart, and other believers who are around us who will speak truth into our lives when we need to hear it.

The author calls us to hold to our original confidence.

And he says, keep it firm.

He's not telling us that we have to somehow maintain that same emotional intensity that maybe we felt when we first met Jesus.

Feelings are fickle.

Emotions rise, emotions fall.

That's not the burden here.

Sometimes your faith feels really, really strong, and sometimes it feels like you're barely able to hold on.

A trembling hand that reaches to Jesus for help.

So the emphasis here is not necessarily maintaining a feeling, but it's continuing to rely on the same Christ in whom we initially placed our confidence.

In the context, when this letter was written, the Hebrews were under tremendous amount of pressure.

Continuing with Jesus had become very costly for them.

They were tempted, like the nation of Israel, they were tempted to return to something easier, safer, more comfortable.

And so the author calls them back to Christ.

Jesus is God's final word.

He's the one who's dealt with sin.

He's our faithful eye priest.

Jesus is better than whatever any of us might be tempted to turn to or to turn back to.

Christian maturity does not mean graduating from simple reliance upon Jesus.

It means continuing to rely on him daily through everything that pressures us to let go of him.

And we hold that confidence until the end.

Now we might arrive at the end weary and wounded and still with questions that are unanswered and unresolved, but by the grace of God we arrive still trusting Jesus.

That's the burden of this passage.

So what do we do with all this?

I feel like I've said a lot, and you know, I want to bring this home for you guys.

So we live in a culture that has trained us to think about the Christian life in ways that the book of Hebrews does not.

You know, consumerism says things to us, you know, consumerism will ask a question like this.

What am I receiving from the church?

Individualism makes faith private.

Superficiality lets us exchange pleasantries in the courtyard and say, ooh, we had fellowship.

Now we didn't deliberately choose these assumptions.

They're simply the air we breathe, but they've kind of shaped our picture of what the church is and what it should be like.

So church can become an event.

It's something that we attend so we can be fed, so we can be encouraged or helped before we return to our lives in which few people know our hearts.

Now, don't misunderstand me here.

Gathering matters deeply, being together matters deeply.

We need worship, we need to hear God's word, we need to pray together and confess and celebrate and remember the gospel together.

Like all these things are good, but there's a lot of New Testament commands that cannot be obeyed simply by virtue of the fact that we sit in the same room together.

We're called to love one another, bear one another's burdens, confess our sins to one another, forgive one another, serve one another, pray for one another, encourage one another.

And those commands require more than just proximity.

They require relationships.

I can't bear burdens that I don't know exist.

We can't encourage one another through struggles if they're never revealed.

We can't speak truth into one another's lives while remaining strangers who worship in the same room once a week.

The one another commands require us to know and to become known.

Hebrews describes the church as more a gathering where we receive ministry from a few people.

God has given every believer both a need and a responsibility.

I need others, we learn in this passage, I need others because sin can deceive me, and someone else needs my encouragement so that they can continue trusting Jesus.

And so that kind of changes the questions, right?

Consumerism asks, what did I receive from my church?

Hebrews asks, whose faith am I helping to strengthen?

Individual asks about my private relationship with God, just between me and Jesus.

Hebrews asks whether anyone among us is becoming hardened.

Do I need to be sensitive to that?

Superficiality asks, well, when I was there, was everybody friendly?

Were they nice to me?

Hebrews asks whether we know each other well enough to recognize when sin is changing their beliefs about God.

Hebrews gives us a different vision of the church.

It's not just a gathering that we attend, it's a people through whom God enables us or helps us to remain faithful to Him.

And this, brothers and sisters, is where life groups serve us so well.

Now, this is not an advertisement for life groups, although there will be signups as you're on your way out.

But Hebrews does not command enrollment in, it does not command enrollment in a church program.

Appearing on a roster for a life group does not guarantee biblical community.

A life group can very easily remain a Bible class or a social gathering, a place where people come together but never move beyond the surface.

These relationships require repeated presence.

We have to show up enough to learn one another's stories.

We have to listen long enough to recognize change.

We have to demonstrate enough care that a difficult question can be heard as love rather than condemnation.

Trust takes time, but it also takes a place.

And a healthy life group can become that place.

It's a community where we open God's word, we allow it to open us, and we ask what lies it might expose, what trust it requires, where obedience has become difficult.

We do life together.

Now, for some, another evening commitment sounds exhausting.

And I don't want to minimize that.

Our schedules and our responsibilities are real.

There's a lot going on in each and every one of our lives.

And that's precisely why oftentimes community gets pushed aside as though it's just an optional social activity.

I don't need that.

But what if, hear me out here, guys, what if a life group or a gathering like this is not one more thing in a list of many things that drains our strength?

What if it's the one way God intends to strengthen you?

God knows that we're vulnerable to discouragement, to temptation, to confusion, to drift.

He doesn't shame us because we need help.

He gives us his people.

He gives us each other.

So for some of us, the response to this message is quite simple.

Enter into relationships where you can become known, where you can receive truth, where you can help others to trust Jesus.

Truly participating in a life group may be your next step.

Others in this room are already in a life group, but they have very conveniently and very strategically remained safely at the edges.

You attend every week, you exchange pleasantries, you discuss the lesson, but you're protecting the places where you struggle.

You're not being honest, you're not being open, you're not being vulnerable.

And so for you, the next step might be telling the truth in the place that God has already given you in your life group.

Some share their struggles, but resist anyone speaking into them.

We come to our life group or we come to these groups and we share, but what we want is sympathy.

We don't want exhortation.

We don't want to hear people, we just want to kind of share.

We get defensive if someone suggests that maybe sin is deceiving me.

Some of us maybe need to look outward.

You know, we sit there and we wait for somebody to notice us.

But maybe I should be the one looking around and asking questions like: who's becoming quieter?

Who's becoming more withdrawn?

Who seems to be carrying pain that sounds increasingly like bitterness?

Who is physically present but is spiritually distant?

I need people who love me enough to notice, and I need to love others enough to notice them.

Imagine fellowship without forced vulnerability or spiritual surveillance.

People who are just coming together, doing life together, building trust, recognizing sin's lies, continually directing each other towards Jesus, encouraging each other along the way.

Doesn't that sound great?

So I'm going to ask you two questions in closing.

First, if your heart were slowly becoming hardened towards God, who would notice?

Who knows when disappointment is becoming distress?

Who knows when weariness is becoming withdrawal?

Who has permission in your life to ask you what you believe about God?

And who would you actually hear?

Second, whom do you know well enough to notice?

Who needs you to listen, to remind, to comfort, to warn, or just to remain present?

Who needs to hear from you today rather than after the crisis has become fully developed?

Because today matters.

Speak today because sin is working today.

Encourage today because hearts are being shaped today.

Help one another hear God's voice today because tomorrow is not promised to us.

There may be some here in this room who don't yet know Christ.

And so the first invitation of this passage for you is not to join a life group, although you're welcome there.

The simple request for you is just to hear his voice.

Perhaps you recognize something of yourself in the warning that I shared today.

You've known about God, you've heard the stories, you've been adjacent, but you've never fully entrusted yourself to him.

Or perhaps pain, disappointment, hurt, past hurt, even in the church, years of resistance when God has been speaking to you.

All this combined has made your heart less responsive.

You've learned to live with the warning light on.

But if you can hear his voice today, your heart is not beyond the reach of his grace.

Jesus Christ came for people who have distrusted God, who sought life apart from him.

People who can't repair their own hearts.

He bore our sin in his death.

He rose from the grave and he offers to all of us forgiveness, reconciliation with God, and life with him.

He is the treasure.

He's not asking you to make yourself worthy before you come.

He's calling you to turn from the life that you've built apart from him and entrust yourself to the one who gave his life for you.

Knowing that Jesus exists is not the same as entrusting yourself to him.

So do not assume you will respond someday.

Don't wait for a more convenient moment or a less complicated life.

The warning of Hebrews is an invitation of mercy.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

Today come to Christ.

For all of us who belong to him, while it is still called today, let us keep listening to his voice.

Let us help one another hold firmly to Christ until the end.

The living God who warns us about hardened hearts is the same God who gives us his word, he gives us his son, and he gives us each other so we can finish well holding firmly to Christ.

Let's pray.

The hardships of life are so real.

Each person in this room, Lord, knows what it's like to live with fear and doubt and confusion and pain.

We live in a world that's wrecked with sin, where injustice, where hardship, where pain, where suffering is the order of the day.

And Lord, as Christians, we're not immune.

We experience it as well, Lord.

And if we're not careful, it's very easy for us to start interpreting our circumstances and allowing those circumstances to determine what we believe about you.

But Lord, you've been nothing but faithful for all of us.

Today and through our entire lives, as we look back, we see this consistent record of you just demonstrating yourself strong on our behalf.

That every step of the way, Lord, you've been with us, leading us, guiding us, providing.

Even when it doesn't make sense, Lord, you've demonstrated yourself trustworthy.

And so we would ask, Lord, that you would help us to just guard our hearts and minds, knowing the deceitfulness of sin, knowing that sin lies and wants us to believe those lies.

You are the place where hope can be found.

Not in sin, not in rebellion, not in ourselves, only in you, Lord.

You are the goal of the Christian life.

This is not, we don't come to you, Lord, just for all the things we can get from you.

We come to you, Lord, because you are the thing.

You are the treasure.

You are the prize.

You are the goal of our lives.

And I would ask, Lord, you would help us to live our lives in light of that.

That our desire would be to continue to pursue you in all that we are and all that we do.

And Lord, we're reminded today of the ministry you've given to each of us.

To, while it's still called today, be encouraging the people around us.

Knowing that we live in a world that experiences pain, hardship, and disappointment, knowing the propensity of the heart to become hardened, Lord.

I pray that we would all rally around each other, that we would truly be what it means to be the church, that we would seek deep relationships with one another, that our desire would be to know each other and to be known by others, to reveal those areas that are hard and difficult, that we would step out of darkness and into the light.

Because it's in that light, Lord, where we can receive hope and health and healing.

All the things that would keep us hidden, Lord, I pray you would just give us courage to step out, to take that stir that first step.

And so for my brothers and sisters in this room, Lord, I just pray that if they're not actively participating in a life group, that you would encourage them to do so.

As we have the signups, that you would help to direct them to a life group where they could experience that healing that only comes from deep relationship.

For those in a life group who maybe have been playacting and just kind of keeping everyone at a distance, I pray you would allow them to open up and to be known and to receive the hope and the and the joy and the healing that can come from community.

And for any Lord in this room who don't yet know you, I pray that they would hear this call as well.

That they would not harden their hearts, but that they would turn their hearts to you, the author and perfecter of our faith, the good and faithful shepherd who loved us.