1. "Of everything that is uncertain in life, the most uncertain of all is life itself."

2. "Some religions may be private matters, and Christianity certainly is a personal matter, but it is not a private matter. Biblical Christianity inevitably involves us following the pattern of Christ's own life, and that is a pattern of stunning, self-exhausting love for the good of others."

3. "There is so little reflection afforded us, particularly around others, that I fear we don't get to hear the echoes and reverberations of our own thoughts, let alone of God's Word."

4. "When we gather in an assembly of people who work so deliberately to love one another, we are encouraged to do the same."

5. "We are instructed and strengthened by assembling together."

6. "The assembly is good. The assembly is not necessary. God is necessary. He will make Himself known through the circumstances He leads His children through."

7. "It's like God is playing a thousand games of chess at once, or like he's healing the brokenness of a thousand different people all at the same time, each in its own beautiful way, every one of us an example showing the intricate excellencies of God's love."

8. "When we don't meet, we're leaving ourselves more in danger of thinking our most fundamental identity is something other than being in Christ. But when we gather, it's like waking up after a dream in realizing this is our most fundamental identity."

9. "As great as these gatherings are, Christ is the point of them. And He is what these gatherings point to and set out. And He is even greater than these gatherings."

10. "My Christian brothers and sisters, you cannot name so many negative circumstances that will checkmate God and His purposes in your life."

Observation Questions

1. According to Hebrews 10:24, what are Christians called to "consider" or give deliberate attention to, and what is the intended outcome of this consideration?

2. In Hebrews 10:25, what habit does the writer warn against, and what does he say some people had already begun doing?

3. What reason does the writer give in verse 25 for why Christians should not neglect meeting together? What "day" is he referring to?

4. Looking at verses 24-25 together, what two positive actions are Christians commanded to do for "one another" in the context of their gatherings?

5. According to the sermon, what is the context of Hebrews 10:24-25 within the broader letter—what had the author been discussing in chapters 9-10 before giving these exhortations?

6. In verse 24, the writer calls Christians to stir one another up to "love and good works." How does the sermon describe the intended chain reaction or catalytic effect of these actions?

Interpretation Questions

1. The sermon states that Christianity is "personal but not private." Based on Hebrews 10:24-25, why is regular assembly with other believers essential rather than optional for following Christ?

2. How does remembering that "the day is drawing near" (v. 25) serve as motivation for the commands in these verses? What is the connection between the coming judgment and our present gatherings?

3. The writer to the Hebrews was addressing Christians tempted to return to more "outwardly ceremonially spectacular religion." How does this context help us understand why he emphasizes the importance of the Christian assembly and mutual encouragement?

4. Why do you think the writer specifically mentions that neglecting the assembly had become "the habit of some"? What does this suggest about the gradual nature of spiritual drift and the importance of regular patterns of gathering?

5. How does the sermon's illustration from Genesis—ending with Joseph in a coffin in Egypt, yet the story continuing in Exodus—relate to the theme of God's faithfulness and our confidence in assembling even during uncertain times?

Application Questions

1. The sermon listed twenty-two lessons learned during the time of not gathering. Which one or two of these resonate most with your own experience, and what specific change in perspective or practice has resulted for you?

2. Hebrews 10:24 calls us to "consider how to stir up one another to love and good works." What is one specific, practical way you could intentionally encourage a fellow church member this week to grow in love or service to others?

3. The sermon mentioned that without regular gathering, our eyes tend to "fall down only to this life." What habits or rhythms can you put in place during the week to keep your focus on God's eternal purposes between Sundays?

4. The preacher noted that some were wearing masks purely out of love for others, calling it "a truly appropriate and Christian symbol of love." In what area of your life right now might you need to set aside personal preference or comfort for the sake of loving others in your congregation or community?

5. Reflecting on the sermon's point that the gathering helps us "fight spiritual sluggishness," what specific temptation to spiritual laziness or drift have you noticed in yourself recently, and how might deeper engagement with your church community help you combat it?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 2:42-47 — This passage describes the practices of the early church, including their devotion to fellowship, breaking of bread, and meeting together, illustrating the communal life that Hebrews 10:24-25 calls believers to maintain.

2. 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 — Paul's teaching on the body of Christ shows how each member is essential and how our differences are meant to build one another up, reinforcing the sermon's point about functioning together like fingers working with a thumb.

3. Romans 12:3-13 — This passage addresses the use of spiritual gifts for mutual edification and the call to genuine love within the body, connecting to the sermon's emphasis on gifts given for the church's encouragement.

4. Colossians 3:12-17 — Here Paul exhorts believers to bear with one another, forgive, and let the word of Christ dwell richly as they teach and admonish one another, echoing the mutual encouragement commanded in Hebrews.

5. Revelation 21:1-7 — This vision of the new heaven and new earth, where God dwells with His people, provides the ultimate fulfillment of what the sermon describes as the "foretaste of heaven" we experience in our present gatherings.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Uncertainty of Life and Our Unchanging God

II. The Blessings and Struggles of Not Meeting Together

III. The Biblical Call to Assemble and Encourage One Another (Hebrews 10:24-25)

IV. Twenty-Two Reflections on What God Has Taught Us Through Not Gathering

V. God's Faithfulness Through Endings and New Beginnings

---

Detailed Sermon Outline

Friends, during these days of meeting in these unusual circumstances, Bobbi and Isaac and I, the teaching pastors here on the staff of the church, do not plan on trying to bring you hour-long open-your-Bibles-and-stare-at-three-chapters-of-Zachariah sermons. I was tempted to continue on in Ezra right where I left off, but I thought better of it. I think during these times where we'll be having more brief sermons, Pray that we have wisdom in knowing what we can do that will be of best use for us as a congregation in these times together. We don't know how long they'll be lasting like this. We don't know exactly what the circumstances will be.

But we know the God who knows all of these things and who has indeed ordered them for our good in ways we can't fully understand. You know, Martin Lloyd-Jones once observed, Of everything that is uncertain in life, the most uncertain of all is life itself.

On how many levels does that ring true this evening? Surely many lessons have been learned by us through these last few months of not meeting. Before even the upheaval socially in these last few weeks, the widespread lockdown has given us isolation as a stern schoolmaster. The staff know from calling around to literally all of you the things that you have shared with us. And what we've found so often is people beginning to struggle after a week or two of enjoying the change of pace, and then it begins to drain them and drain them when they feel even weakened by circumstances.

The confluences of hard circumstances has, no doubt, disabused many of weak hopes, introduced true uncertainties and truer certainties that too many have ignored, this is a time of opportunity for us to let people know of better hopes than they may have imagined. I wonder how it's been for you honestly for the last three months not meeting.

Well, honestly, Mark, Sundays have been a lot more restful. It took quite a bit of effort to do this today. I can barely imagine giving more time to it.

I've gotten caught up on my reading and my correspondence, my emails waiting are at zero for the first time in years. I've gotten tasks done around the house.

But I've missed people so much.

I've missed the singing.

I've missed the regular praying together. I don't pray as well without praying with you regularly. I've missed the weddings.

I've missed being able to say goodbye to people when they leave.

Friends, open your Bibles or turn them on on your phones. Look at Hebrews 10. Just a couple of verses and then some reflections.

Hebrews is that letter written to Christians who were thinking about going back to more outwardly ceremonially spectacular religion. And here in the middle of the letter, after reviewing the sacrifice of Christ in chapters 9 and 10 and reminding his readers of the confidence that they could have in Christ and the one who has died for us and has brought us near to God, We see here in the second half of chapter 10 the exhortations that since Christ has brought us near to God, we should live out that nearness in a number of different ways.

We see in verses 19 to 23, he lays those out. And then here in verses 24 and 25, he exhorts us to not neglect assembling in order to encourage each other in this privileged position of nearness to God through Christ. We're given this confidence through the written Word of God and remembering the coming day and through regularly assembling with a particular group of Christians that we do life with. Look again at these familiar verses. Hebrews 10:24-25.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

The call here is for Christians to consider, that is to give some time thinking about, to give some attention in our schedules to what? What does he say? To stir up how to provoke in a positive sense, how to motivate and who are we to motivate? Who are we to stir up? Well, he says, One another.

Who comprises this one another?

The fellow Christians that we meet with regularly. What are we to stir them up to? Love and good works. Now this is interesting. This is not merely an exhortation for us to do good, as powerful as that might be in itself, but for us to do good to a particular set of people, fellow Christians, and a particular good to stir them, these fellow Christians, up to...

again, to what? To love and good works. That is, to do good to others.

So instead of the writer here merely calling for random acts of kindness, which might give testimony to you and your individual virtue, he's calling for a deliberate plan of action which are intended to provoke other actions which are in turn to affect yet a third circle of people. Hebrews calls them here to catalytic actions, encouraging an ongoing chain reaction of charity among the members of this congregation.

Sometimes when you talk to people who are church goers, even if they're not in their hearts Christ followers, They're quick to avoid deeply personal conversation. They might say, well, I don't know, religion is a private matter.

Well, friends, some religions may be private matters, and Christianity certainly is a personal matter, but it is not a private matter. Biblical Christianity inevitably involves us following the pattern of Christ's own life, and that is a pattern of stunning, self-exhausting love for the good of others.

And in line with this, he warns them of a danger there in verse 25, Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. Apparently there were some who understood themselves to be among their number, who they thought of as Christians, who had begun to make a habit of neglecting the assembly.

Now, does that mean the Sunday morning assembly? It doesn't say that. Well, that's true, but from the New Testament and from the history of the church, there are no other contenders for what it could mean, what it could be referring to. I mean, it could simply be a random fellowship, but How can you tell if somebody has a habit of neglecting what's not regular? The only way you can neglect it is if it's regular.

Besides, we know from Acts and from the letters and even from the book of Revelation that the first Christians had a special regard for the day on which Jesus was raised, even calling it the Lord's Day and meeting regularly then. But some, it seems here, were neglecting this. And here the writer warns them not to do that. And he gives them the ground for this fact, that the day is drawing near. The day is a reference, of course, to the day of the Lord.

That's a reference to the return of Christ and the final judgment. And the logic is that remembering this, recalling this to mind, will quicken our step, will increase our motivation to act now. It will fuel us to act honorably in a way that will please the Lord, in sharing the good news with others who stand under the threat of God's coming judgment, in working for love and justice today in a way that will honor God and all those made in His image, and in encouraging one another to keep going until God says we're done.

Brothers and sisters, I wonder how this time of not meeting, not because of our neglect, but because of providentially being hindered, has helped you to see afresh the glories of gathering.

How has God been using this unusual time in that regard in your life? What has He been teaching us about the gathering?

I think we could give an almost infinitely long list.

But let me just share a few reflections. I'll number them because I'm not quite sure how many there will be. But if you're taking notes, here comes some.

Number one, simply to appreciate the blessing that the gathering is.

Perhaps we've begun to take it for granted. For 102 years since the Spanish flu, our church had not known a Sunday when it had not assembled. Maybe we just assumed we would always have time to sing 10 hymns loudly right next to each other and be able to stand around in an old small room for three hours, greeting each other, even receiving loving South American kisses on both cheeks.

But time over the last three months has shown us that that's a blessing we can't always count on.

Secondly, I think it's helped us to note and actively oppose those tendencies in us and circumstances that would cause us to neglect it?

Do we see in ourselves temptations to neglect the assembly? Has it been made clear to us how significantly helpful and God-glorifying and other-loving it is to be regularly at the assembly?

Number three, to appreciate the goodness of silence and reflecting in quietness before the Lord. Those few moments of quietness in our regular service after the announcements, before the sermon, sometimes after the sermon, after the benediction. They're very short. If you total them up, maybe they're two or three minutes. But friends, these days, even at the pump for gasoline, you're not allowed silence.

There is so little reflection afforded us, particularly around others, that I fear we don't get to hear the echoes and reverberations of our own thoughts, let alone of God's Word. What a blessing it is to be someplace where even the smallest little islands of silence and quietness are structured to show us how we can reflect.

Number four, to help us grow in our appreciation for God and for who He is and for what He has done for us in Christ. Friends, the main reason we're together is because there is such a good God who has made us all in His image, against whom we have all sinned, against whom He is rightly wrathful, but for whom He has sent His Son who has lived a perfectly good life and has died as a substitutionary sacrifice on the cross. In the place of all those who would ever turn and trust in Him. Friend, if you're visiting with us today under these most unlikely circumstances, you're here with a friend or family member, know that this message of Christianity is for you in these days. Ask your friend, your family member who's brought you to explain it to you, maybe for the 10th time.

Maybe you'll hear it now. In a way you haven't heard it before, of how you can be forgiven for your sins and restored to a right relationship with God that you were literally made to have.

Number five, to help us appreciate how the gathering is used to both instruct and encourage us in love. It's fascinating, isn't it, that he says here in verse 24, Let's consider how to stir one another up to love. He doesn't just say to good works. And he could be using love and good works to mean each other, but I think there's a distinction between them. That we are being taught and encouraged in love by our assembly.

Some of you are very committed to wearing your masks.

I was told not to because of physically where I am and what I'm trying to do right now.

But when I walked here today, I had my mask somewhere. Here it is. It'll go on again afterwards when the microphone's taken off me. Others of you are wearing the mask only out of your love for others. But what a wonderful thing to do.

What a truly appropriate and Christian symbol of your love. When we gather in an assembly of people who work so deliberately to love one another, we are encouraged to do the same.

To help us appreciate how the gathering is used to prepare us and propel us to good actions and deeds. I'm struck that regularly assembling like this helps us to make war against our own spiritual sluggishness. Have you noticed in these last few months how spiritually how ignorant you've been for days on end. Have you noticed your attention wandering, your feebleness as a Christian seeming to increase?

Friends, we are instructed and strengthened by assembling together. Number seven, to understand more and empathize with Christians in the past. And so many around the world today who cannot meet regularly, we have lacked this benefit for three months. We have brothers and sisters around the world who've lacked it for three years. Or what's more, who've never had it.

Friends, I've often met people from such situations. And almost without fail, I notice not only a strength of zeal in their commitment that challenges me, but some weakness and weediness where they've just not been taught in fellowship with one another in some ways that they would be helped by. That's a blessing that is entrusted to us and that we could be more mindful of to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world. Similar to that, number eight, God in His providence has given us a taste of what persecution has been like for so many and may be for us. How many Christians have not been allowed to assemble in the past?

Enslaved persons here in North America, again and again, not allowed to assemble as Christians. Baptists in Virginia, not allowed for centuries to assemble as Christians. Or even today around the world, in North Korea or Saudi Arabia or Iran, not allowed to assemble as Christians. When we see what that persecution is like, we can pray more knowledgeably. We may be more stirred up to pray now by our own experience.

God may be preparing us for more that's to come in His providence.

We learn to trust God through it. The assembly is good. The assembly is not necessary. God is necessary. He will make Himself known through the circumstances He leads His children through.

Through the wilderness from Egypt to the Promised Land, there were trials aplenty. God was faithful in all of them. Each challenge was learning a new position in which God would show Himself fully faithful, in which His children were to learn to trust Him. Number 10, God uses this to make fellowship more sweet to us by its absence. It causes us to long to meet together again.

Number 11. It causes us not just to appreciate the fellowship in abstract, but to love and appreciate other individuals more.

How wonderful it is to see person after person here that I've known for weeks or months or years but haven't seen. It's so good just to see you.

Number 12, God uses this to cause us to understand others more and so better bear their burdens. In the time that we've not gathered, killings have been reported that have shaken many, including many in our own congregation. Many of us have been trying even harder to listen to each other and to speak up as we think best to love them. And others in our society. Meeting together helps us to do this.

We're impoverished when we can't.

Number 13, God uses this to convict us of sin and to help us fight our sin.

Number 14, He uses this to cause us to realize the importance of encouraging each other through our gatherings. For example, we see the treasure chest that the local church is of encouragement as we see God's work in sanctifying so many different people in so many different ways. It's like God is playing a thousand games of chess at once, or like he's healing the brokenness of a thousand different people all at the same time, each in its own beautiful way, every one of us an example showing the intricate excellencies of God's love. Brothers and sisters, this is part of the sweetness of knowing and meeting with one another. Number 15, to cause us to experience more of what it means to be the body of Christ, to remind us what we have in common Christ and His Spirit.

And how our differences are to be used to build one another up and help each other and coordinate in common action, like the thumb and the fingers working together. That's what we can do as a local church that we can't just do as individual thumbs by ourselves.

Number 16, to be built up through the various gifts of the Spirit. You look at Paul in 1 Corinthians or Romans when he talks about the gifts. The purpose of the gifts is to build each other up, to build the church up like the gift of teaching right now. All of the gifts are given for the edification of the church. Every bit of action you've seen represented in the physical objects up here are part of the gift of service and love that members of this church have expressed to you.

This is all ultimately from God. For our encouragement and edification. Number 17, it reminds us of our most fundamental identity. When we don't meet, we're leaving ourselves more in danger of thinking our most fundamental identity is something other than being in Christ. But when we gather, it's like waking up after a dream in realizing this is our most fundamental identity.

Number 18, it gives us the ability to baptize and share the Lord's Supper.

Number 19, it helps us to realize how this weekly gathering draws our eyes up to God and His person and His purposes for us, and without it, have you found that your eyes tend to fall down only to this life? What you can see immediately before you and not much else. This gathering is meant to teach us the truth and to give us more of a true perspective of what's going on with God and His world. Number 20, it's given to realize that we are meant to begin our week with the celebration of the resurrection. Of Jesus Christ.

And then to go on and live the other six days out of that reorientation, out of that fullness of joy for what God has done and hope for what God will do.

We could turn this into a 22-part series because any one of these I would love to say more about, but I'm just sharing with you the summaries of these meditations. But on that one, you realize how important that regular reorientation of us is. This idea of a weekly rhythm is not the brilliant plan of your elders. God Himself structured this in the very nature of creation. He patterned it Himself in the first chapter of Genesis, and it's continued on throughout creation.

Brothers and sisters, we are not so strong that we can set aside that pattern without hurting ourselves and others.

Number 21, one of the sweetest ones: the gathering exists ultimately to remind us of the sufficiency of Christ, as He has sustained us even through this time of no gathering. That He will sustain many of our number who are not currently able to gather. That He will sustain us if we come to that time in our lives as so many do, when they must lay aside this blessing of gathering, not for three weeks or three months, but for the remainder of their earthly pilgrimage. Because God is preparing them a better home. And the time for this blessing passes.

Friends, as great as these gatherings are, Christ is the point of them. And He is what these gatherings point to and set out. And He is even greater than these gatherings. He has showed His greatness in His proving Himself sufficient for us in our lives over these last three months. And the last one I'll share right now, number 22.

We have these gatherings to consider something more of what the unending nature of heaven will be like. How the assembly helps us to remember the approaching day, as the writer puts it here in verse 25. By giving us a little preview of it, a foretaste of it. Through our songs and prayers, nearness to God, through the reading and hearing of His Word, through the preaching as His Spirit deals with our hearts, heaven truly is a world of love. And these gatherings at the beginning of each week are little outposts of it.

Whetting our appetite for what is surely to come.

I was recently reviewing the first five books of the Bible with a friend, just trying to quickly explain what Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were all about. And with Genesis, you know, it's a great book of the creation of the beginning of life. But again, if you've got your Bible with you, If you look over at Genesis, it's pretty striking that through all 50 chapters, as the world begins, as the human race begins, as the people of faith begin with the call of Abram, it ends in a coffin.

In Egypt, the last verse of Genesis. So Joseph died, being one hundred and ten years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. This book of the creation of life ends with a coffin in Egypt. But friends, if we think that coffin ends this story, We've got quite a surprise coming.

God would not fail in His purposes for His people. They sometimes appeared to us to pause for a day, for a season, even sometimes for a longer period. But just as we see here when we turn the page to the book of Exodus, even when there arose rulers who were shrewd, it says, and enslaved His people, That wasn't the end of the story. God was setting it up for an even greater act where He would show even more clearly His greatness. My Christian brothers and sisters, you cannot name so many negative circumstances that will checkmate God and His purposes in your life.

God knows exactly what He's doing in the life of this congregation. And of every congregation around DC and around this nation and around the world, we are the ones who see that the day is drawing near. Those around us don't see that. They act as if this is all there is. All of their hopes are tied up with this.

But friends, God is faithful to us, and we can know His faithfulness in days of mourning, and days of ending and days of coffins. Because we know that after that, there are more days of beginnings and of joy and of hopefulness. In this coming day that we read of in Hebrews 10, we know that God will not fail us on that day, and He will not fail us today. Remembering His faithfulness on that day will help us to see it today. And so, stir one another up to love and good works.

Let's pray together.

Lord God, we pray that yout would be lifted up and honored in our hearts as our hopes are encouraged. As our hearts are inflamed with love for you and your people. Accept the praise of our song and of our days until we can gather again. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.