KEY PRINCIPLES FROM THIS MESSAGE:
“exhort” – from parakaleo [para = “from close-beside” + kaleo = “to call”) – to “make a call” from being “close-up and personal” (“personally make a call”); refers to believers offering up evidence that stands up in God’s court.
Barnes on Heb 3:13
Church members should exhort one another. There may not be the intimacy of personal friendship among all the members of a large church, but still the connection between them should be regarded as sufficiently tender and confidential to make it proper for anyone to admonish a brother who goes astray. They belong to the same communion. They sit down at the same supper of the Lord. They express their assent to the same articles of faith. They are regarded by the community as united.
Each member sustains a portion of the honor and the responsibility of the whole; and each member should feel that he has a right, and that it is his duty to admonish a brother if he goes astray. Yet this duty is greatly neglected. In what church is it performed? How often do church members see a fellow member go astray without any exhortation or admonition! How often do they hear reports of the inconsistent lives of other members and perhaps contribute to the circulation of those reports themselves, without any pains taken to inquire whether they are true!
How often do the poor fear the rich members of the church, or the rich despise the poor, and see one another live in sin, without any attempt to entreat or save them! I would not have the courtesies of life violated. I would not have any assume a dogmatical or dictatorial air. I would have no one step out of his proper sphere of life.
But the principle which I would lay down is, that the fact of church membership should inspire such confidence as to make it proper for one member to exhort another whom he sees going astray. Belonging to the same family; having the same interest in religion; and all suffering when one suffers, why should they not be allowed tenderly and kindly to exhort one another to a holy life?
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Belonging to the same family; having the same interest in religion; and all suffering when one suffers, why should they not be allowed tenderly and kindly to exhort one another to a holy life?
God’s Word is ointment for the soul.
The Value of Well-Timed Words – blog 7/14/23
The value of well-timed words (gracious words) cannot be overestimated. Ask yourself this question: can you recall any critical moments throughout your own life when the gracious words of someone else saved your day from being a complete catastrophe? Or has anyone ever been sent by God to you in your greatest time of need with just the right words of encouragement? I’ve met a lot of people in my life who have said that they wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the well-timed words of someone else. Now, what if those encouragers chose to dismiss your pain with a joke? Get my point?
A gentle tongue is a tree of life.
-Proverbs 15:4
Wisdom is what we need, my friend. Knowing the right thing to say at the right time could literally save someone’s life someday. And since we never really know who’s going through what, maybe the best approach to speech, in general, is to keep it godly. What do you think?
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
-Galatians 6:9-10