Every Lord’s Day at this point in our worship service an exhortation is given. In these exhortations, you are reminded of God’s commands and are both admonished and encouraged to obey these commands. Naturally, this comes before our time of confession, because we are all reminded of the many ways in which we fall short of God’s standard and have sinned.

What I want to point out to you this morning is that what I am doing right now is really nothing more than what Scripture says you ought to be doing every day for one another.

Consider Hebrews 3 which reads, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day,as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

We are to exhort one another daily. We are to encourage one another to good works and to kill sin daily. This doesn’t look like setting up a pulpit in your friend’s living room. Instead, the exhorting happens during the normal activities of life, in conversations with brothers and sisters.

John Piper has summarized this need for exhortation by saying that, “Perseverance is a community project. The Christian life is not for lone rangers. It is a team sport. God has designed your salvation and your sanctification to come about through the help of others. Just like God once used someone to bear the gospel message on your life, so too He uses others to continue that good work of salvation in you. 

So do not shy away from exhorting one another, speaking the truth in love. And be receptive to the admonishment and encouragement of a brother or sister, as we all together walk this ancient path to that same Celestial City.