Image: Fellowship at the Grace Evangelical Church, Hong Kong
This post continues notes from my sermon preached
on December 11, 2016 on "The Benefits of Christian Community" from
Ecclesiastes 4:9-16.
We need the
benefits of the church (the brethren in the local, visible body of believers):
Jesus taught in the New Commandment
that his disciples were to love one another (John 13:34-35). In Hebrews 10 we read the exhortation:
Hebrews 10:24 And let us
consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: 25 Not forsaking
the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but
exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day
approaching.
Charles Bridges observes:
The live coal
left alone soon loses its vital heat.
But heap the coals around it, and we have a genial atmosphere. The most lively professor left alone is in
danger of waxing cold in selfishness.
But the precious ‘communion of saints’ warms the Christian from the very
centre (Ecclesiastes, p. 91).
He later adds:
This principle
also rebukes the religious solitaire—that isolated being, who belong to no
Church, because no Church is perfect enough for him….. Surely it is better to belong to an imperfect
(not heretical) Church than to none (p. 91).
Psalm 68:6 says, “God setteth the
solitary in families.”
It is a “social obligation” of every
believer to be part of a local church.
JTR
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