COC 533 Not Forsaking The Assembly Pt 1

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Episode Transcript

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Where are around see Lord as donGreetings to the beloved brothers and sisters in
Christ, those in the YouTube,Facebook and Twitter audience. Thankful for your

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your presence, thank you, thankfulfor you tuning in. And we're most
of all thankful to God, becausewithout him, none of this would be
possible. As a matter of fact, without him, m life wouldn't even

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be worth living. Now, youlive a life and you don't have no
hope or nothing to look forward to. What What good is life if you
just live in? And that's it? Hebrews Chapter ten. Hebrews Chapter ten,

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And for sake of time, I'llread verses nineteen through twenty five.

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Therefore, Brothers, since we haveconfidence to enter the most holy place by
the blood of Jesus, by anew and living way open for us through
the curtain that is His body.And since we have a great a great

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priest over the House of God,let us draw near to God with a
sincere heart, in full assurance offaith, having our hearts sprinkle to cleanse
us from a guilty conscience, andhaving our bodies washed with pure water.
Let us hold unswervingly to the hopewe profess for He who promised is faithful,

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and let us consider how we mayspur one another on toward love and
good deeds. Let us not giveup meeting together, as some are in
the habit of doing, but letus encourage one another, and all the

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more as you see the day approaching. This Lord's Day is our third installment
in our series on assembly and worship. The last two Lord's Days we were

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in First Corinthians chapter eleven, dealingwith the abuses and the shaming that took
place during the Lord's Supper or duringthe communal meal, where there was a

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lack of concern based on a hierarchyof brothers and sisters in Christ. Today,
what we want to do is atthe title is not forsaking the assembly,
but we want to look at theseverses through a proper lens, because

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I don't believe in the body ofChrist we've actually looked at these verses through
the proper life. Most of thetime. When Hebrews ten twenty five was
quoted, it was quoted without anycontext, without any background, and for

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the most part only to I wouldsay, for lack of a better word,
condemn those who didn't attend the assembly. Yes, and in a lot
of cases there was no real concernfor why they didn't attend. It was
just to be right to say orscare people into saying, you need to

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be here. I want to sayin tweaking your interests on this, I
still want to say that many ofus may look at the assembly is optional,
but it's not optional and many ofus to me, just based on

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what went on today with brother Mariohaving to lead all the songs and do
any do most of everything in theassembly, to me, that's just indicative
that it still shows that we're notgrasping the communal concept. Well what do

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I mean by not grasping the communalconcept? Well, he shouldn't be the
only one that's encouraging us by leadinghim, because we got other brothers here.
Uh, not only that, AndI said that I said this before,
but maybe you are still uncomfortable withit. What prohibits a sister from

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leading to him? All you gotto do is make it. Well,
first of all, you gotta gethere on time, unless we got to
start with that, so you can'tbe so quick to want to do something
but then not be here in timeto do it. But I'm mainly focusing
on there are other brothers here,But yet the brother had to do it,

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do the bulk of everything. Butyou know what, God bless you,
brother, God bless you. That'swhere the Lord is leading you.
Then you keep doing what you're doing, and the brothers that aren't doing don't
get mad at him for doing it. Now, the Book of Hebrews.

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Some of you have a Bible thatsays the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews.
Anybody have a Bible that says thatthe Epistle of Paul the Apostle to
the Hebrews at the top of yourbible. Well, you don't have to
look forward if it's there. That'snot inspired. We don't know who wrote

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the Book of Hebrews. Now.I know some people try to say fancy
things, and you know, it'sfunny that you would try to say that
Paul wrote it. Yet the Bookof Hebrews is actually using as its authority
the Old Scriptures or what we callthe Old Testament. There are no quotations

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in the Book of Hebrews of anydirect statements of Jesus. Yet the Hebrew
writer is proving Jesus you missed that, you missed that There are no direct
statements in the Book of Hebrews ofJesus. But yet the Hebrew writer is
proving who Jesus is? Well,how is the Hebrew writer proving who Jesus

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is by the Old Testament scriptures?And let me say there are at least
but I'm sure more quotations in theBook of Hebrews taken directly from the Old
Testament scriptures. So let let's walkthrough this. I would walk you through

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chapters one and lead up as tochapter ten, as I normally do,
but for the sake of time,because there's so much information in these six
verses that I need to spend sometime looking at these verses. I need
to spend some time giving you someexplanation of these verses, because by the

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time we get the verse number twentyfive, really twenty four and twenty five.
I'm not saying you're gonna be madat me, but I am going
say and in order cause you tolook deeply within yourself to see what purpose
do you serve as a believer,Because we all have a purpose you Lord,

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and we need to be in aheadspace where we're trying to descern,
determine, and learn, Lord,what is my purpose for being at this
gathering, not only what is mypurpose for being at this gathering? What
is my purpose in the kingdom thatyou're the king of. I said to

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you, and I've been saying this, and I said I was going to
be redundant, that I'm trying toget you to a space, and some
of y'all still showed that there wassomething amiss and it wasn't a missing me,
but maybe it was a missing comprehension. And I said, I'm trying
to get you into a space whereyou don't look at ten o'clock as a

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Bible study, even though we're studyingscripture. And what I meant by you
don't look at it as a Biblestudy, meaning you don't look at it
as lesser value than at eleven o'clockwhat you call a worship service. And
there's no such thing in the Bibleas a worship service or a Bible study.

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But studying the Bible happens, andworship happens, but it's not a
Bible study, nor is it aworship service. So I don't want you
to draw a line of demarcation ormake a dichotomy and say I don't really
have an urge to get there atten as long as I get there by

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eleven. That's a selfish attitude,and it also shows you have no concern
for your brothers and sisters. Yousay, what do you mean that I
have no concern for my brothers andsisters. Let me also say, because
you always got to deal with thispart, just because you got here at
ten don't mean you have a concerneither. So I don't see. We

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got to deal with both sides.What I'm saying is when there's an opportunity
for saints to gather, then youought to have a concern for those who
are gathering. We aught not pickand choose and say, well, I

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think this service is more important thanthat service, or I'm gonna try my
best to make this one, butI'm not gonna make that one. Well,
you don't have the choice to makeone higher than any other, because
the root of it is the reasonwhy we're at the table. The reason
why we're gathering is because of whatJesus did. So how do you minimize

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or maximize and pick and choose whenthe purpose is what Jesus did? So
ten o'clock ain't no Bible study.We're gathering eleven o'clock. Ain't no,
ain't no worship service. We're gathering. But watch this worship can take place

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at ten a level and seven pointthirty on Tuesday. So you know what
Tuesday is. Tuesday is just anextension of the gathering that we begin to
start on the first day of theweek. Now I know we made things
optional because of how social media hasgiven us a platform where people have just

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become lazy. That's all it is. You can get mad at me all
you want. Folk have just becomelazy. And you see, when you
start developing a habit, it's harderto break when the habit is based upon
laziness, slowfulness, and also convenience. Let me say, I have to

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admit this. It's convenient on Sunday. After whether you worked all week or
whatever you did, it just convenienton Sunday just to do this. Sure,
sure, I mean you could bein your bed and it's ten o'clock.

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You walk up nine to forty five, right, and you said,
Arnold's coming on at ten, propyour pillow up, put your little you
would be on your blanket. Arnold'son, all right. Convenience right?

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Not? Oh, there are peopleof God down at the building gathering that
may have a problem, that mayneed prayer, that may have the issue,
that may had a depth in thefamily, that may be going through
a trial of tribulation. You justthen eleven o'clock. Let me get up,

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Arnold been teaching four hour. Letme see what's in the refrigerator.
I need some bacon and eggs.He ain't on yet. They gonna sing
and do the communion. Let meget this, Let me get this stuff
cooking here. Let me get thisbatter going here. Let me get this
orange juice poured. Let me turnon the flame and get these eggs scrambled
up. By the time I doall that, then Reggie will be on

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at nine point thirty to get onmy nerves. But at least I got
something to eat. You see howthat can be developed when in reality it
ought to be. First of all, the Lord woke me up. I
don't know who else he woke up, but he woke me up. And

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this is an opportunity. Sometime wemissed this, don't you know? Somebody
could die at the ten o'clock serviceand you missed them because of your selfish
attitude. So now you come inat eleven what happened to brother so and
so. You know while we wasin service Lord Caldy, you had an

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opportunity to see him, You hadopportunity to pray with him. But you
chose convenience over communion, right,you chose what your used to See the
problem is, folk have been doingchurch for so long. We don't know
about communion because churches just wake up, try to put on something nice,

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get dressed, go down there,check off your bucket list of what you
need to do, and then Isee y'all next week. You didn't grow,
You didn't take nothing in. Youwere looking for something to say amen
to. And then I said lastweek when I preached out at Darby,

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I don't preach for amens. Well, why do you preach to educate?
That's why I preach to educate?Why why do you preach to educate?
Because what better education can you havethan the Word of God. That's why

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folks get upset because they're being educated. And what it's doing, the Word
is exposing not only the selfishness,but the self righteousness that's in our hearts.
Don't you know? The Bible bringsyou face the face with all the
wickedness and all the evil that youhave in your life, and you want

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to blame me, And it wasright there all week. Maybe that's why
people don't read the Bible because theydon't want to come face to face with
the things they need to change,the things they need to consider, and
the things they need to do betteron. I don't need to do better
on nothing, trying to do thebest I can. Well, try harder,

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try harder, But you have toask yourself. Let me say this.
The reason why some don't try harderbecause they're not getting a reward now
for doing it. Let me talkto this side. You know, reward

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motivates people to do things more better, doesn't it? Because somebody said there's
a reward, and you know theysay a five hundred dollars reward. If
you can tell me you know whohas my dog? My dog ran away
and you know who got it.Right now, you're gonna be on that
line dialing a hundred times. Iknow who got your dog, I know

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who got your dog? Do youhave the five hundred dollars? But when
somebody says, because that's why nextweek I'm going into what's love got to
do with it that that's really goingto expose. That's going to expose many
of us who say that we love. But see what we'll say is we

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love because And as soon as yousay because, that means you don't down,
that's next month, that's next month. And then then we'll say we
like. Because we like, wecan make it mean what we want it
to mean. With love, itcan only mean what God says it meant.

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Even though we try to manipulate theword love, tear it into pieces,
make it mean what we want itto mean. It can only mean
what the Holy Spirit revealed that itmeant. And love is not a feeling.
Love is a decision. Oh yeah, it's a decision. It's a

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decision. It ain't It ain't afeeling. Because right now you can say,
well, I don't love this personbased on how you feel. Could
you imagine if Jesus was like that. Could you imagine if jesus love was
predicated on how he felt about humanity? You remember when God said when he

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looked around, he said, allthe imaginations in Genesis chapter six, all
the imaginations and thoughts of mankind wasonly evil continually, And it repented God
that he made man. Yeah,had repented God that he made man,
but thanks be to God, hedidn't stopped loving man. Could you imagine

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if God said I'm sorry I madeyou and then turned around and said I
don't love you no more? Soask yourself this question, because this is
where you have to start, sincewe're talking about the assembly. Do I
love God first? And if Isay I love God? How is that

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manifested in real time? How isthat revealed among my brothers and sisters that
I love them? Let me saythis. It ain't always about money,
it ain't always about time. Buthow is it manifested? Is it just
manifested for an hour on Sunday?Is it just manifested? You know everybody

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loved when they eating. Is itjust manifested around a meal? How is
my love for God channeled through meto my brothers and sisters in Christ?
So let's get to it. Hebrews, Chapter ten, verse number nineteen.

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That's just the introduction. That allthat was with the introduction. So I
hope you, like I said,I don't think you're gonna get mad.
I think it's just going to showa selfish, self righteous attitude that we've
manifested and It's not just this congregation. This attitude is at many congregations.
Matter of fact, I saw itlast week. I'm preaching last week and

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a brother and sister walked out whileI was out darby preaching, walked out,
said they couldn't take it no more, that they they had enough.
Well, you made it personal,you said you had enough of me.
The question is was the word presented? You see how the focus can get

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off the word and it go toa person because you don't like what the
word is saying, but you blamethe person. Then no brother said nothing
to me after I spoke. Well, one tried to get up and they
had to pull him down. Hegot mad or whatever, said what I
taught was false and and this thatand the other. And you know what,

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I'm alright with that. You knowwhy I'm alright with that because sometimes
you can hear a lie for solong. When you finally hear the truth,
it sounds like a lie to youbecause you've been listening to a lie
for so long. And then thattruth come in and turn over the tables
and break everything up and cut downall the idols and just break it up
and turn it in to mince meat, and then you get all in your

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feelings and all in yourself, andyou just wanna be right, and the
spirit is saying you ain't right onthis one partner. You're gonna listen to
me on this one partner, oryou're gonna just keep fighting with it.
So let's dive in Hebrews, chapterten, verse number nineteen, Come on,
brother Mario, and it reads thereforebrothers and sisters, Therefore, brothers

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and sisters, let me say that. And I believe I've said this to
you sometime ago when I was inHebrews before. The letter of Hebrews is
actually a word of exhortation. Ifyou look at the last chapter, I
believe, chapter thirteen, verse twentytwo, he says, suffer the word

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of exhortation. So this is anexhortation that's showing how superior and how better
and how greater Jesus is. Nowwatch this. Once you acknowledge the superiority
of Christ in your life, youdon't need a command to come at ten

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or eleven. You'll just say,win are the saints media? I want
to be around the Saints. Igotta spend so much time around POOKI a
killer Shanique Mustafa and everybody else.I want to be around people who have
the same love for God that Ihave. I want to be around people

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who are on their knees praying tothe same God that I'm praying. To
be around people who go through thesame struggles that I go through but can
make it. I want to bearound people that can just smile even in
the midst all the hell that theygo through. That's who I want to
be around. But we don't haveno problem being around the people who negatively

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influence us and smile, hang aroundlonger, get there on time, love
it, don't we It don't evenmatter if it's people in your family.
I ain't saying don't love your family. I'm saying everybody in your family ain't
a good influence on you. Butwe ain't got no problem. They say,

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Hey, I'm having such and suchin my house. Boom, we're
there, and then you know what, we'll say, Well, the reason
why I do that is because theirfamily, Oh oh, oh, their
family, what about this family?What about christ family? What about us?

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We can get kicked to the curband we say, well, they
blood I knew them before I knewyou. You're right, they're blood.
You knew them before you knew me. But where's the tighter bond. I'm

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not talking about love more in loveless. I'm saying, where's the greater
bond? Where's the greater experience?Because I would say, for the most
part, when we're around our family, worship don't take place. We're around
our family, just busting it up, as they say, right, cutting

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up, just talking about nothing.Right, Just you know, you'll ever
been around family and you ain't talkingabout nothing. You're just talking, you
reminiscing. You remember when I wentto the problem. You remember when we
fought the two people across the street, right, you're talking about Remember when

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we did this, and we usedto do this, and we used to
do that, Remember the dance?Remember this just small talk, right,
just busting it up. But thenyou say, you know what, if
I got to be around them,See now that means if I come at
ten, I gotta hear scripture forthat hour, then I gotta hear scripture

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for another hour at at at eleveno'clock, that's just too much scripture.
So the trade off is, I'llsee if I can handle the scripture at
eleven because I ain't. I don'twant to deal with it at ten?
Well, why why you? Whyyou? Why would we put a time
limit on how long we hear scripturewhen you put it over in the against

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the time that we hear garbage.How many of us are willing to admit
you take more garbage in than youdo scripture. I mean from TV,
the news, social media, peopleyou talk to. We take more garbage

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in from that than we do takingin the revelation of the Spirit. And
I'm not condemning you. I'm justsaying you need to be real that you
take more in of that. AndI would say, to a certain extent,

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you not even thinking about time?Oh no way are you. You're
not thinking about time. Matter offact, you say boy is too short.
So you tell me between ten inone and it's broken up because there's

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a prayer in there the songs forme. I don't know what I do
with ow shoeld out. I don'tknow what I do our shoe low,
with our shoe load