Faith Won’t Survive Without Friends
00:00:00.000 | Well, we won't endure alone.
00:00:07.140 | We need one another.
00:00:08.820 | And the book of Hebrews is very clear on this point in Hebrews 3, verses 12 to 14.
00:00:13.920 | There we are commanded to "take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving
00:00:18.400 | heart leading you to fall away from the living God.
00:00:22.340 | But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may
00:00:27.040 | be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin; for we have come to share in Christ, if indeed
00:00:32.660 | we hold our original confidence firm to the end."
00:00:36.960 | That's a great text, important point.
00:00:39.520 | If we are to endure to the end, we need one another as we fight to see Christ as better
00:00:46.080 | than all the false promises of this world.
00:00:49.760 | Here's Pastor John applying this text.
00:00:53.600 | If the essence of deceit, sin, hardness, unbelief, falling away, eternal destruction, if the
00:01:01.360 | essence of the deceit is "God is less to be desired than blank," what are you going to
00:01:13.840 | say?
00:01:14.840 | He's better.
00:01:15.840 | He's better.
00:01:16.840 | Christ is better.
00:01:21.520 | His way is better.
00:01:23.640 | And a thousand experiential and biblical ways of showing that he's better, that's what you're
00:01:30.760 | going to say, right?
00:01:35.200 | And if that's right, and Hebrews 11 illustrates it with, "Even the reproaches of Christ are
00:01:43.680 | better than the pleasures of Egypt," chapter 11, verse 26.
00:01:47.880 | Even the reproaches of the Christ are greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.
00:01:55.440 | If that's the positive things we're going to say, the negative also true.
00:02:00.000 | You're going to die if you don't turn around.
00:02:06.560 | You're going to say, "The pleasures of Egypt are fleeting.
00:02:13.400 | Don't go there.
00:02:14.960 | You will perish in the Red Sea.
00:02:16.920 | If you go there, you'll die in the wilderness.
00:02:18.920 | If you go there, and we will warn them."
00:02:21.560 | I have a letter here.
00:02:25.600 | This is sent to me.
00:02:27.040 | I love to save letters.
00:02:29.440 | This is back when people wrote letters, 1992, handwritten by a young woman who was going
00:02:35.720 | here in the '80s, and she was living in fornication, and her conscience was bothering her, and
00:02:44.360 | she came to see me.
00:02:45.360 | I threw that out, and after a little while, I said to her, "You know, don't you, that
00:02:53.840 | if you continue in this, you'll go to hell," is what she wrote seven years later.
00:02:59.920 | 1985, so it's written in '92.
00:03:02.880 | 1985, I wonder whether you remember a very much younger me sitting in your office and
00:03:08.680 | telling you I was afraid God would have to use a car accident or some other awful event
00:03:13.560 | to get my attention.
00:03:15.520 | You pointed out that the consequences of my deliberate choice to continue sinning would
00:03:20.760 | be nothing short of hell itself.
00:03:24.000 | No one had ever before told me I was headed for hell, missionary kid, that I was "saved"
00:03:31.680 | at age six.
00:03:34.040 | It was a turning point in my life, and I have wanted to thank you and tell you that ever
00:03:41.920 | since.
00:03:42.920 | I assured Mom that a warning such as that in 1985 conversation made me feel the more
00:03:51.880 | loved after I heard what you really think of it in listening to your message.
00:03:59.840 | That you cared enough to tell me a stranger at the time means more than ever with the
00:04:07.200 | echo in my ears, your compassion came through to me.
00:04:15.000 | You say he's better, and you say, "If you don't turn and fight this, you're going to
00:04:22.080 | perish."
00:04:23.960 | You say that to your roommate.
00:04:26.080 | You say it to your child.
00:04:31.440 | Maybe one more story and a closing word.
00:04:33.840 | I've seen Tom sitting back there, I love Tom Steller.
00:04:37.480 | Few people have strengthened my hand in the Lord more than Tom for 37 years, longer actually.
00:04:46.720 | We've done a lot of things together.
00:04:48.280 | You'll remember this one, Tom.
00:04:50.640 | There's a woman in the 80s again who was struggling with such terrible depression, and she was
00:05:00.040 | suicidal, scary so.
00:05:03.400 | We were young, we didn't know much, but we made her promise us, we were in this together,
00:05:08.520 | we made her promise us, "You will not hurt yourself without calling us."
00:05:12.800 | Can you promise?
00:05:13.800 | I promise.
00:05:14.800 | All right.
00:05:15.800 | So late one night, I get a call, "Tom, no."
00:05:20.160 | I say, "Look, you must promise me, promise me right now, I'm going to call the police.
00:05:25.040 | Promise me that you'll meet us at the church within 15 minutes."
00:05:30.360 | We both lived close by, so did she, to church, she did.
00:05:35.640 | The building is gone now, but I can picture where we sat in the 1914 building.
00:05:40.320 | And we sat with her, how long, Tom?
00:05:42.800 | Two, three hours?
00:05:45.120 | The darkness in that room, spiritually, was awful.
00:05:47.840 | You could just see it was like a huge, heavy, wet, dark blanket.
00:05:53.960 | Everything about her was oppressed.
00:05:57.400 | And we exhorted her and gave promises to her and prayed with her and sat in silence with
00:06:03.680 | her, and God lifted that darkness.
00:06:09.360 | You could see it lift.
00:06:12.960 | That woman is in this church ministering today.
00:06:16.800 | And I believe, Tom, we saved her.
00:06:20.440 | We did.
00:06:23.040 | God Almighty used us with words and prayer to save her, both from physical and probably
00:06:32.960 | spiritual destruction.
00:06:37.960 | Leave you with one picture of what you're called to do.
00:06:41.440 | In 1 Samuel 23, David's life is in the balance.
00:06:47.240 | The people of the town of Keilah have betrayed him, and the prophet tells him, "They're going
00:06:56.800 | to betray you."
00:06:57.800 | So he escapes and leaves Keilah.
00:07:01.240 | At the end of the chapter, the Ziphites treacherously tell Saul quietly where David is, and Saul
00:07:09.240 | comes after him.
00:07:11.720 | David finds out, he escapes by the skin of his teeth.
00:07:15.120 | I've tried to imagine the pressure of doing ministry like that.
00:07:19.080 | Pressure, stress, tension, discouragement.
00:07:22.320 | And you want to say, "Is it worth it to be the Lord's anointed?"
00:07:28.440 | And you will say that.
00:07:29.840 | "Is it worth it to be a Christian?
00:07:32.080 | Is it worth it to be a pastor?"
00:07:35.640 | How are you going to survive in those moments?
00:07:39.480 | How did David survive?
00:07:41.400 | Well, I think the chapter is arranged this way, between the betrayal and the treachery,
00:07:47.240 | right in the middle here is verse 16, "And Jonathan, Saul's son, rose and went to David
00:07:56.120 | at Horash and strengthened his hand in God."
00:08:00.840 | You got a friend like that?
00:08:04.440 | Be that for each other.
00:08:06.760 | Be that for each other.
00:08:09.800 | We can't survive without God's mercy horizontally mediated to us.
00:08:17.840 | So exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, lest there be in any of
00:08:26.440 | you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
00:08:33.800 | Serious.
00:08:34.800 | It's a glorious calling.
00:08:37.240 | Amen.
00:08:38.240 | That is a glorious calling.
00:08:39.240 | As we carry for one another, as we seek to hold our original confidence firm to the end.
00:08:44.880 | This clip is from John Piper's sermon titled, "We Need Each Other.
00:08:48.520 | Christian Fellowship is a Means of Perseverance."
00:08:50.640 | A sermon on Hebrews chapter 3, verses 12 to 14, preached on April 12th, 2017.
00:08:57.060 | This entire message is available right now at DesiringGod.org.
00:09:00.640 | And this clip was submitted by a longtime podcast listener named Richie, who lives in
00:09:04.400 | Chandigarh, India.
00:09:06.400 | That's in northern India.
00:09:07.600 | In Chandigarh, India.
00:09:08.960 | Thank you, Richie, for sending it in to us.
00:09:11.360 | Clips like this one are crowdsourced.
00:09:13.320 | You tell us what bits of Piper's sermons catch your ear, and we share that clip with the
00:09:16.680 | APJ audience.
00:09:17.680 | If you've got one, email me.
00:09:18.920 | Give me your name, your hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens
00:09:23.360 | in the sermon audio, and tell me how it impacted you.
00:09:26.360 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:09:32.000 | That's an email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:09:36.320 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:37.600 | We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday.
00:09:41.820 | Faith is really important, and next time we're going to look at the question of why does
00:09:44.560 | God allow suffering in our lives, especially the kind of suffering that may harm our faith
00:09:50.960 | in him.
00:09:51.960 | It's a significant question.
00:09:53.120 | You won't want to miss it.
00:09:54.120 | That's up on Friday.
00:09:55.120 | We'll see you then.
00:09:55.440 | We'll see you then.
00:09:56.440 | [END]
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