"Encourage one another"

Morning, everyone. This morning's reading is from Proverbs chapter 27, and that's on page 6 63 of the church bibles. It should be 1 fairly close to you. And we're just gonna a few verses. I'll announce them as we read through so you can keep up.

So it's proverbs, chapter 27, page 6 63. And the first verses we can look at are 5 and 6. And these are proverbs these are problems about wisdom about friendship. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Woons from a friend can be trusted as an enemy, multi implies kisses, and verses 9 and 10.

Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice. Do not forsake your friend or a friend of your family, and do not go to your relatives house when disaster strikes you better a neighbor nearby than a relative far away. And in verse 17, as iron sharpens iron. So 1 person sharpens another. Can you hear me?

Yes. Excellent. Now next question is, can I we'll hope this? Oh, it's it's moving without me touching. It's amazing.

Hi. I'm John Yull. I'm, a member of the church here, and also I've just started leading 1 of the gospel communities. So This is, this is a lesson I've been pondering over for a while, and I hope to share some thoughts with you this morning. But I want to start by talking about my grandmother, Alice, She used to come occasionally for meals with my family when I was a child.

It could be lunch, it could be tea. And invariably, at some point in the meal, she would mutter away these with knives. These wooden knives. I didn't understand. I asked my mom, what does she mean?

That they're made of steel, aren't they? But she they're not sharp. They're like to her, they're like wood. She wants sharp knives to cut through the meal so she can eat it. But she feels these are wooden.

Fast forward to more recently, my when my brother in law's comes to spend Christmas with us every year, and invariably, again, after he's unpacked, the first thing he asks is, where is the wet stone, your whetstone, that's w h e t. Wetstone. Yeah. And he what does he do? It's actually his whetstone, but he just leaves it with us.

What does he do? He sharpens the carving knives so that the Christmas meal can be prepared properly. Now the message I'm giving, I suspect my group will be checking on Wednesday when we put the cutlery out is we don't we don't have awesome cutlery. Are the music group laughing? Good.

They are. But what I want to talk about this morning is the color is supposed to be sharp, so it can fulfill its purpose. And that sort of image applies to us. As Christians, are we sharpened? Are we ready to fulfill our purpose?

And that's the message today. And part of the way we do this, sharpening is by encouraging 1 another. This is the 1 another encouraging section. We want to encourage each other to grow in our spiritual maturity and in the way that we live out our Chris beliefs. So let's pray before we look at the passages.

Heavenly father, we bow in your presence. May your word be our rule, your holy spirit, our teacher, and your glory, our supreme concern through Jesus Christ, our lord, amen. So, oops, there we go, gospel community is under why I'm looking behind. It's perfectly clear it's in front of me, but I will I will learn. Please be patient with me.

So we're going to encourage 1 another in these gospel communities. This is 1 of the 50 or more, 1 another phrases you find in the new testament. So as Bharat has said, we've looked at love 1 another. The love that's used by Christ that, time is the agape love. The love, god has shown to us.

We show to others. It's a selfless love. It's unconditional, and we're to live it out. As god has shown us that love, we are to live it out with each other. Today, we're gonna look at encouraging 1 another, which I believe flows from that command.

If we love 1 another, we will want to encourage and build each other up. Now if you are new to Christian things, what I'm hoping you'll see this morning is what we do doesn't stop at 12 o'clock on a Sunday. It x it flows over into the week. Christianity is not Sunday, it is more than Sunday. If you're visiting from another church, I hope that what we're talking about, you are experiencing in your small groups within your own church.

And if you're a member of Hope Church, I'm hoping, so there's lots of hopes here, I'm hoping that you've experienced some of this encouragement already in your groups as you've met. So before we start so if we go to move, I want to talk about 1 way encouragement. We're gonna look at mutual encouragement or reciprocal encouragement, but I want to talk about 1 way encouragement, which the lord gives us. The lord is the best encourager of all. He is the great encourager.

The lord in expired his disciples, he encouraged them. And thinking about that, I thought of an example, later on in John, we looked at John 13 last week in John 16. Jesus says In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart. I've overcome the world. Jesus has told his disciples of the things that are gonna happen to them, and they're not particularly good.

But at the end of that, he encourages them by reminding them that he has to overcome the world. Jesus is the great encourager. Now Jesus Ministry on Earth was 1 of encouragement, but it wasn't really 2 way. It was mainly him encouraging them. If you think carefully, there are a couple of times I think he might have been encouraged by his disciples.

He sent the 72 out to the town's abilities around, and they came back with joy at what had happened. I suspect that was encouraging. And Peter encouraged Jesus when he said you are the Christ, but mainly the encouragement was 1 way from Christ to his disciples. There is another model of encouragement in the new testament. It's a guy called Joseph.

Joseph to Levi from Cyprus, remember him? Barnnebus, son of encouragement. So there are other people that are paragons or examples of encouragement to us, but they tend to be 1 way. Now encouragement isn't the preserve or the role purely of preachers and pastor workers. It is the role of each 1 of us.

We are to be involved in encouragement. So it's 2 way, not 1 way. It is 2 way. The law's disciples should encourage 1 another. It's not an elite job.

Even Paul looked forward to going to Rome to see the Christians in the church there and had mutual encouragement. So there are over 50 verses on 1 anothers, and there are 3 that talk about encouraging 1 another, and I'll share them with you. 2 of them are in thessalonians, I'm gonna stand back. Therefore, encourage 1 another with these words. And later on in the letter, therefore encourage 1 another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing.

Once thessalonians 4 18, 1 thessalonians 5 11. Context. The thessalonian church was 1 of the first churches Paul planted, and they were waiting for Christ's return. And while they waited, people started to die of various things that you did in the wrong world. And they worried, what about the people who've died before Christ return?

What happens to them? And when when is Christ returning? So Paul wrote this letter to deal with those and to encourage them to continue on. And that's why it talks about these words. These words in my letter are there for you to encourage each other with to to build each other up.

Yes. It's tough. Being a Christian, people will pass away. Problems will come. Christ will return, but you wanted to encourage them to keep going.

That's the first 2. Third 1 is very familiar. This is from the letter to the Hebrews, And let us consider how we may spur 1 another on towards love and good deeds. Not giving up meeting together at summer in the habit of doing, but encouraging 1 another, and all the more as you see the day approach the day of the lord approaching. Again, context, this is a church of which there are a large number of people who've converted to Christianity from Judaism.

They've suffered persecution. They've suffered pulse teaching, and some have left the church. But the right encourages those who remain to carry on to continue on with their their belief in Christ and who he is and living it out in the world. So again, difficulties facing the church. Words to encouragement are inserted in these letters to the churches to encourage them to encourage 1 another.

So time for some takeaways. Does people still have takeaways or deliveroo? Is it deliveroo's now? Other services are available. Okay.

I want what can we take away from these 3 verses about encouraging 1 another. First 1 is we must commit time together. Commit to spending time together. Hebrew, the Hebrews passage talks about continued to meet. Continue to meet.

Commit time to 1 another to encourage 1 another. Now I'm gonna give you a massive quote here. This is not what I normally do. This is a wall of words Hopefully, it won't fall on you. But I think this is this is quite an impressive thing.

It's by a guy called Alice De Begg. He if you want it's too late to give it for father's day move for Christmas. He's done 2 excellent books of daily devotion This is taken from 1 of them. And in the day's talks, he said, why why do people in church before the service and after the service not sort of talk about spiritual things? It worried him.

And he said, you know, if we are to commit to spending time speaking to 1 another about the greatness of god, the truth of his word, and the wonder of his dealings with us, and praying with 1 another about the week ahead and the trials we face, then we would begin to understand better the 1 another passages in the new test for we would be living it out. I think gospel communities are a brilliant opportunity to do this. We often are squeezed by what's going on on Sunday, but by meeting it another time, we can do these things together. We can encourage 1 another by speaking about the greatness of god, the truth of his word, the wonder of how he deals with us, and praying for 1 another for the week ahead. God's will give us the space I believe to do this often when we're under other pressures on a Sunday.

So I'm inspired by Alastair and the way that he said we should commit time together to do these things. They don't happen quickly. They happen because we spend time together encouraging 1 another. So that's the first takeaway. Second takeaway.

Get alongside each other to help. The word in Greek for we translate into English encourage is to go alongside now if you get alongside someone, you're close to them aren't you? You can see them. You can you can study them if you want to, but you get to know people. If you're close to them.

If you spend time with them, you'll close-up, you get to know them, you get to know what they're doing, how they're thinking, how they're feeling, and you can help them far better because you spent time with them. You can know what to do to encourage them by words and by actions. So commit to time, get alongside each other to encourage each other. Number 3, encourage each other from scripture. The, the festivals are entitled to encourage each other with the words from Paul.

The words from Paul are part of our scripture. A major part of our time together in gospel communities will be studying the word of god. Bible study. And it's a really good way to encourage 1 another. Encourage each other with the scriptures, your insight into the scriptures that can speak into a situation that people are faced thing.

I was, thinking what what 1 should I share to give you an example, I'm gonna just those are making notes. Have a look at 1 Peter 3 15. I find that an incredibly encouraging script to do it later, but that's 1 that I find encouraging. You'll have an opportunity to encourage each other in the group. So commit to time, get alongside each other, encourage each other by using the scripture.

And then you can start to build each other up. Paul in Romans uses a lovely term. He calls it mutual edification. An ed edifice is a building, isn't it? Yep.

Mutual edification. This is really quite important. We're told to build each other up. I find it hard to build people up. It's much easier.

What's the opposite of building up? Tear down, not down, flatten. This is such a difficult thing to get right. It's something that we all need to do as we grow in our communities so that we know how to build each other up. I was thinking of, things that could happen.

There's some imaginary situations Sombe says to you in the group, we should love each other with an agape love. We'd say, I agree. I affirm that. I encourage you in that. That's true.

That's the easy 1. What if somebody instead said in the group, I think we should focus on loving our family and our friends. How do you build them up? Is that totally true or is it only partly true? How do you affirm them but say, well, we need to develop this because it should go beyond that in a way that we'll build them up and not knock them back.

It's a skill you have to sort of develop in your groups. Or if somebody says to you, I think well, I should only love the people who first shown some love to me. That's not right. Is it? How do you, if you can't affirm that?

If you challenge it, how do you challenge it in a way that you can encourage people to rethink that pile of their thought and take those bricks out if you like at the wall and put different bricks in. This is so hard, but it needs to be done. It needs to be something that we see as we encourage each other in our gospel communities. So commit to time, get alongside, encourage you in the scriptures, look to build people up, not to flatten them for your mutual edification, spur each other on. That was from the Hebrew's passage.

Now the Greek here is a bit hard. If you look at it, sometimes it's it's translated. Not spur, but provoke. Are you provocative? Do you provoke people?

Other translations do say stir up. Do you stir USura? Okay. I prefer I think the NOVs got it right. SPIR people on.

The image, I think they've got correctly. A spur is a sharp thing, isn't it? But riders wear on their boots. To push into the side of the horse, not to hurt them, but to encourage them to move forward, make them uncomfortable, spur them on. Now in the Christian Life, Are you sitting comfortably?

Okay. Maybe we should be looking to do things that spur each other on, make us uncomfortable. Stop us from sitting back and relaxing. Stop a from standing still. Now 1 thing comes to mind that we're thinking of doing in hope church.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Are you thinking door to door? That sort of, makes me uncomfortable. Does it make you uncomfortable? Is that the sort of thing you naturally want to do?

But by seeing this being put forward and possibly talking about it within our groups, it's easy to hide in the church as a whole and say, keep quiet. But in the if we talk about it in our Coastal community, will be able to hide, will be able to sit comfortably, or will we spur each other on. So commit to time, get alongside, encourage through the scriptures, build each other up and spur each other on. And this is quite I think Paul is really good. There's nothing worse than somebody telling you to do something you're already doing.

Doesn't that your take you. Some people even do it while you're doing it, which is even more irritating. Yeah. So Paul knows they're doing it. He's not saying you need to start.

He says you're doing it already. Please continue. He's really quite good in doing that because people can be so discouraged if you're doing it and you're told to do it. But he encourages them to do what they should be doing. And I'm hoping you've already had encouragement.

You've encouraged 1 another in your groups. Will gone very quiet. But we should be looking. If it hasn't happened already, next week is your opportunity. Encourage 1 another.

Now, Stephen will came up with the new term gospel communities. I've got another 1. Gospel friendships. I haven't trademarked it. I think if our gospel communities work well, we will start to form gospel for friendships, gospel friendships.

I'm doing quite a lot of book reviews today. I quite like Sam Aubrey. He wrote a really good little book called White bothered with Church, spoiler alert, It's worth hamming, but it is worth bothering with church, by the way. It is a thing you should continue. These commuters are not to replace church.

They're a compliment, not a substitute for it, but he says this quite tellingly in part of his book. He says small groups tend to be where the most vital 1 another ministry takes place. Relationships of deepened insights of shared and problems and difficulties in life are discussed and addressed. It's quite useful to say. Small groups don't have to be gospel community.

There can be twos or threes. There are appropriate groupings you can have. It doesn't have to be 10 or more or whatever. It can be smaller than that. But small groups are, I think, where you have the opportunity to do these things more effectively and sharpen each other.

So I think it's really quite, it's quite a good thing to do. So relationships or deepen if relationships deepen, that means a deeper friendship is occurring. And with that, it's much easier to encourage 1 another. These relationships are formed from people of diverse backgrounds and experiences, and the 1 thing that we have in common is our love of Christ. Many of those things will be different, but the love of Christ is what holds the friendship.

It is the foundation of the friendship. And friendship is a major theme of the verses from proverbs that I talked about or had read rather, a few minutes ago. I'm just gonna share 2 of them briefly with you. The others you can look at in your communities later in the week. Now they say that you live your life through your children vicariously.

Have you heard that phrase? I didn't think I'd be using this first, but some of you may know about a month ago on a Saturday night, about 9 o'clock. We got a tech from 1 of my sons that said help. And he needed to get to the hospital, which was 20 minutes drive from where he lived with his wife quite quickly. Only problem was their car I wouldn't go into it now, but their car was over a hundred miles away from where they were, and they couldn't drive to the hospital.

We were over an hour's drive away probably another 20 minutes after that to the hospital, and we were quite concerned. But the good news was he didn't just send the text to us. He sent it to his local group, his his house group, his local church, and they took them to the hospital, much faster than we could. And when we got there, they're already they're in the hospital and the attention was being given appropriately. So as I say, I was very encouraged that he could do that.

That was great. He didn't have to wait for us many people today say you just you rely on yourself. Self reliance is everything, but they came to rely on not their family, but their friends in that situation. That was encouraging to me. Okay.

And now we get back to where we started, cutlery. Iron sharpens iron. So 1 man sharpens another. Any fans of the King James? King James version translates this 1 man sharpens another's a friend's countenance or a friend.

We should be sharpening each other in these gospel communities. I our relation ship should deepen and our encouragement should lead to sharpening. So we do what we're meant to do. We will sharpen 1 another in our discipleship, and we'll do we'll be doing the things that we are intended to do. So as we commit time to each other, we will rub up against each other.

Are you rubbing up against the other members of your group? Hopefully, it's quite comfortable. It may not be. We are from different backgrounds, different experiences, different perspectives, but we will be rubbing up against each other, and there could be some friction. Oh, even some sparks.

Who's who knows? But we will be rubbing up against each other alongside these gospel friends. And as we get to know each other, we'll we'll be able to express our thoughts and our feelings. And it's good to be able to verbalize what you're thinking. If you just keep it in your head, it doesn't always go very far, but if you can express what you're thinking, what feeling, things begin to make sense.

You understand what's going on. You understand yourself and others better. If you speak out what you're you're thinking, you may actually challenge other people by what you said. Or you may have given them an opportunity to respond to you and to sharpen you up. You may say something that sharpens them as a Christian.

They may respond to what you said and sharpen you. We respond to each other in the groups, we encourage each other and sharpen 1 another. If your gospel friends are able to, the they'll show you things to do that you could challenge each other to change the way that you move around in your comfort zone. They could, by being in a gospel community that may find yourself moving out of your comfort zone and doing things that you're not comfortable with, things that you might never have forward doing or you knew you could do, but you'd rather not. So prepare for your gospel friends to sharpen up what you do, how you think, how you respond, how you understand the word of god, lots of sharpening going on in these gospel communities, lots of encouragement that can be achieved as we encourage 1 another in our question lives.

It's not a solitary walk. It's a walk. It's a group walk through life. Walk with friends, support 1 another. Now next week, you may want to consider some things like how do you feel about giving and receiving encouragement within a gospel community within Hope Church.

Remember, the encouragement doesn't just happen in the in the communities. It can happen in the wider church. How do you feel about mutual encouragement? Not just receiving, but giving and growing together in your year maturity. Are you excited about the idea of mutual encouragement?

It means that you've gotta allow people to get alongside you and open up. Does that make you nervous? Are you excited or are you nervous? I I'm impatient to see these relationships where mutual encouragement occurs on a deep level. It may take time.

Groups take time to settle down to rub against each other in a way that they feel comfortable but also challenged. It's gonna take time. Be patient. Are you concerned about how relationships will develop? How will you handle any friction?

People can disagree. People can have different perspectives. Those will be worked out within the community, but you should always be thinking about loving and encouraging 1 another. Okay. And finally, What happens to Hope Church as a whole?

We shouldn't be neglecting the fellowship here. It still goes on and there's still so much to do together as a group. We shouldn't just focus on the midweek sessions. We should also be here. On Sundays as well.

So hope church continues this is not a substitute. It is a compliment. So let's encourage 1 another and sharpen each other as we walk in the Western life. Lots to talk about in the week on this to follow-up on many of these points, but we'll stop we'll stop there. Let's let's pray.

Every father, we do thank you for your love. The love you showed through Jesus. We thank you that Jesus is our great encouragement. Help us to love and encourage each other within Hope Church and within our smaller groups, our gospel communities. Help us to rub along together.

Help us to form gospel friendships that are deep and supportive. And as we seek to do, your will. Help us by your Holy Spirit to do these many things. In Jesus, name, we ask it, amen.