Two Journeys

Scripture says, "He who walks with the wise grows wise," and I think that's why Hebrews 11 is given to us, so that by faith, as we read the accounts of faith-filled men and women of the past, we can walk with the wise and grow wise ourselves. For the last four or five weeks, I've been kind of walking with Enoch, especially him, trying to understand his faith, trying to understand his example. This is the one about whom it's testified that Enoch walked with God. And friends, there is no one wiser than God. And so, when you walk with the wise, you grow wise. Enoch walked with God.

Oh, the depths of the riches, the wisdom, the knowledge of God, how insatiable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out, the infinite wisdom of God. And so, for me, I've been pondering that expression. What does it mean to walk with God? And some images come in my mind, something I read from a Puritan pastor some time ago, Thomas Goodwin. He's describing the way that God pours out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and the way that God testifies directly to us that we are His children, by faith and by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Thomas Goodwin was describing a father and a son walking together along the road and they are hand in hand. And the son knows that he is the son of his father, he knows that his father loves him, there's no doubt in his mind about it, he is absolutely secure in that love. And then suddenly, the father moved by some impulse, picks that little boy up and hugs him and kisses him and squeezes him, tells them, "I'll always love." Set him back down on the road. There's just a qualitative difference before and after, Amen?

And so, that image comes in my mind. When I think of walking with God, that's what I think of. Sometimes I'll even ask him in the name of that teaching I got, "Lord, would you do that to me right now? Just pick me up and squeeze me and tell me that you love me." I don't think there's anything wrong, I think there's everything right with a prayer like that. Well, then I think about Jesus and His post-resurrection appearance walking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Wouldn't you love to have been one of those two disciples, to just walk with Jesus? And not just at any time in redemptive history, but specifically that day, resurrection day, and to walk with the risen Lord and to sit down at table with Jesus and to break bread with him and eat with him.

Later on, we're going to have the Lord's Supper, that the... It's a symbol of the promise that we have that some day Jesus will do precisely that with us. Some day, he's going to sit at table with us. And so, walking with God, that's what's on my mind, trying to understand that. And both of the men that are in front of us today, in Hebrews 11, it's testified of both of them, Enoch and Noah, that they walked with God. Interestingly, it's an expression that's used of no one else in the Bible. Abraham says, "The Lord before whom I have walked…" And so Abraham walked in front of God or before him. I don't, in any way, doubt that Abraham walked with God. I'm just talking about the words, and it's said only of these two, Enoch and Noah. So we're going to study today. We're told that Enoch walked with God. We're told, in Genesis 6:9, that, "Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God." And so for me, I want to understand how that can be. This God, this infinite God, this mysterious God. The God who is a spirit, and has not a body like us humans. No body parts or passions. A God who is a wind, a God who is a consuming fire, a God of whom, it said, "Heaven, even the highest heavens, cannot contain Him."

What does it mean to walk with God? That's what's in front of us today. Now, the first time that we have this image of God walking in the Bible, it's actually negative, it's an image of judgment. After Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it says that they heard the sound of God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they were terrified and they ran and hid from God. And what a great tragedy that is? If you think about it, what an incredible tragedy? They recognize the sound, and so they knew that fellowship of walking with God, but that fellowship had now been broken, they were terrified of walking with God because God was coming to judge them.

Little by little as Genesis unfolds, it seems that God recedes from human consciousness, takes further and further steps back. It seems that Cain and Abel had communication with God and Cain was able to talk to God and God to answer Cain, etcetera. But by the end of Genesis 4, it says, "At that time, men began to call on the name of the Lord…" And people are building altars, and they settled into that pattern that we know that ultimately you can only walk with God by faith. So little by little, only by faith. And so we have this basic principle of all of human experience with this invisible God. It's given in Hebrews 11:6, we've already looked at it, can't look at it too much. And that is "Without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him." And so a life that's well-pleasing to God, that's what's in front of us, that's the centerpiece of my life. I want to say to God at every moment, "Oh God, I believe that you exist. I want to please you, I want to come to you, I want you to reward me for the things that I've done. That's the kind of life I want to earnestly diligently seek you, oh God."

I believe that that's what's in front of us as we described this idea of walking with God, that at every moment of the day, every day of the year, someone who's walking with God is saying that to God. I just said a moment ago that God feels heaven, and even the highest heavens cannot contain God. I see in our society a force called secularism that forces God to take his place in a box, and tells God, "This is your place now, you stay put. Be a good boy and stay put. And don't get outside that box that we're going to put you in." But a Christian doesn't put God in any box, I want God in everything I do. I want God involved in every decision I make, every dollar I spend. Every minute of the day, I want God in the center of all of it. I don't believe in that kind of a vision. Some day, the glory of Jesus is going to radiate through the new heavens and the new earth. There'll be no part of it that doesn't radiate with Jesus Christ. So away with that way of living, I don't want to live like that. I'm not even worried about secular education or secularism or any of those things in the college. I'm worried about it in my own heart, that I would put God in a box and not bring him over into every area of my life.

So Hebrews 11:6 tells me that basic principle, and I say to you that this is, in essence, the only kind of life that ends up in heaven. This is the life that ends up in heaven. Do not be deceived. At the end of Hebrews 10, we are told very plainly, look at last two verses, verses 38 and 39, "But my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who believe to the salvation of our souls." And then Hebrews 11 tells us what that faith looks like that saves our souls. And so these aren't just super-duper Christians or extra special Christian, this is the essence of the kind of life that leads to heaven, and it's a life in which we are walking with God.

So look at verse 5, let's look at Enoch, in particular, "By faith, Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. He could not be found because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as someone who pleased God." Now, we have this mysterious figure of Enoch. There's actually a very limited Biblical record of this man, we don't know much about him. We have this verse here in Hebrews 11:5. We have mention of him in the genealogical unfolding of Genesis 5, and there we find these words, "When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years."

Now that has just weighed heavily on me. I said to some friends, this morning, I said, "I'd like to walk with God 300 minutes." Let's start with that, Amen? Let's start with 300 minutes and just build from there. "Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God and then he was no more because God took him away." And then you have Jude 14 and 15 that tells us this about Enoch, "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men" these kinds of false teachers, etcetera. He prophesied about them. So Enoch was a prophet. And Enoch prophesied, "Behold, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of His holy ones, to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him." That's Jude 14 and 15. That's is it. That's all we have about this man, Enoch.

What does the author tell us about Enoch and why has he brought forward in Hebrews 11? Well, Enoch, according to the author of Hebrews, is an example of faith, by faith, etcetera, etcetera, by faith, Enoch. So Enoch is an example of faith. And so we know that it is by faith that Enoch walked with God. Now, when we talk about walking with God, I think we're talking about the minutia, the details of everyday life. That's what the expression means to me. You're getting down to the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts, where we use the expression, "Where the rubber meets the road." Walking with God. So we use this kind of expression, taking steps, steps to, Billy Graham had a steps to peace with God kind of thing. So sometimes you break something up into steps or step-by-step instructions. It's almost Christmas time, you're going to be looking at those, step-by-step instructions. Look, in defense of the engineers that write, and first of all, they're just not really good with words, so you just have to cut them some slack. They generally aren't very good with language.

Second of all, in their defense, it's really hard to break something down step-by-step, it's hard to describe it. So do your best as you assemble whatever you're told to assemble with step-by-step instructions. But the point is very plainly, what we're talking about here is just step-by-step in your life. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot with God every moment. That's what it means to me, to walk with God. And this image, this metaphor of walking is huge in the Bible, it's not a minor theme. It's a huge theme.

The Patriarchs Walked With God

I've already mentioned concerning Abraham, it says, "When Abraham was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, 'I am God almighty, walk before me and be blameless.'" What he's meaning is, "I see everything you do. Be holy because I am holy." Or again, Abraham, when talking to a servant, is he's sending a serving away to go find a wife for Isaac, and he said this, "The Lord before whom I have walked will send his angel with you and make your journey a success." So he has a sense, "I have walked before the Lord, I'm walking in His sight."

Jacob blessed Joseph at the end of his life and said, "May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac, walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who has delivered me from all harm, may He bless these boys." So there's a sense of that walking with God throughout the book of Genesis. And then in Deuteronomy, that's the verb connected with the commands of God, Deuteronomy 5:33, "Walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you're going in to possess." So walk in my commandments.

And then very powerfully, in Deuteronomy 6, "These commandments," there the Lord says, speaking to parents, especially, "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts." And He says, "Impress them on your children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road. When you lie down and when you get up." So these commandments are to be woven through every day life. You're supposed to walk in my commandments in everyday life. An many such verses, Micah 6:8 kind of summarizes the whole of a life that's pleasing to God, "He has shown you O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you, but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

Christians Are Commanded to Walk in the Ways of God

Christians in the New Testament are commanded to walk with Christ. We're commanded to walk with God in Christ. 1st John chapter 1 says, "If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from every sin." That's such a powerful verse for me because it shows that 1 John is not teaching perfectionism, that you can actually be walking in the light and still need an ongoing cleansing from sin. And that is true, that's the Christian life, that's the healthy Christian life. It's not the perfect life, but it's a life of walking in the light, as God is in the light and then receiving, from Jesus, that ongoing cleansing.

And so, we are commanded to walk. And you can't walk with someone, Ecclesiastes tells us, unless we be in agreement. You can't walk with God unless the two of you are in essential agreement about who he is, about who you are, about his word. We have to be in essential agreement. And you can't walk with God as a created being and not walk humbly with your God, Amen? It will humble you, and you will know you are not equals in this walk. Because you can't walk with God unless you dearly love him. And you love righteousness, and you love everything that he's about, and you love the things that he loves and you love His people. The essence of what it means to walk with God. And this is the life that's laid out before all believers. Again, I can't say this strongly enough, this is not the special extra Christian life, advanced placement Christianity, this is the true Christian life.

And so we have, in Romans 4:12, that Abraham "is the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that their father Abraham had while he was still uncircumcised." So Abraham, we'll get to him in due time, but Abraham lived a certain life, he walked a certain walk, and we have to walk in the footsteps of his faith. This is, again, not extra credit Christianity, this is what is the Christian life. And so we are in 2 Corinthians 5:7, to "walk by faith and not by sight."

The Goal: Constant fellowship with Almighty God

Alright, so what is the goal in all of this? Constant fellowship with Almighty God. He is your treasure, He is your pleasure, He is everything you desire. And so it says in Leviticus 26:12, God speaking to us, "I will walk among you and I will be your God and you will be my people." It's God's desire too. He wants to walk with us and we with Him. And so, the ultimate fulfillment of this, in Revelation, in Revelation 3:4, it says, "You have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes, they will walk with me dressed in white for they are worthy." And so in Revelation 21, it says the New Jerusalem "does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. And the nations will walk by its light. And the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it." So there's going to be an every day life in heaven, and the nations, the redeemed of the nations, will walk by the light of the glory of Jesus radiating from the New Jerusalem right to the end.

So that's what it means to walk with God. Now who was this man, Enoch. Well, Enoch was a human being, he was just a man. What we say in James Chapter five, Elijah was a man just like us, of like passions like with us. He's not a different breed of human being, he's just a human being. He was the father of Methuselah, who I think in popular culture is probably more famous than Enoch. More people know Methuselah than they do Enoch because Methuselah happened to die at age 969, and that's the biggest number reached in Genesis 5.

And so he was the oldest man who ever lived. Yes, but Enoch was his father. And of the two clearly the Scriptures celebrates Enoch more. So he was Methuselah's father, he was the great grandfather of Noah who also walked with God. And Enoch is an amazing man, a 300 years of walking with God are rewarded by an extraordinary gift, which I'll talk about in a moment. He was a father of sons and daughters. He lived an ordinary life about which we know nothing, but we know this, in walking with God, he did it all by faith. He ate by faith, he worked by faith, he interacted with his neighbors by faith. And we have a sense that he lived in a wicked generation. Increasingly wicked.

I don't think the wickedness just suddenly started in Noah's day, but I think it was just ramping up, ramping up, and so he was surrounded by ungodly, people, and so that's why he speaks like this, in Jude 14, and 15 about all the ungodly people and all their ungodly things. What's so amazing about Jude 14 and 15, is that Enoch the prophet, seventh from Adam predicted, not the first coming of Jesus, but the second coming. With the eye of faith he looks even beyond the first coming to Jesus the Lord coming back with myriads of His holy ones to judge all the ungodly people. Second coming of Christ. Now, how did Enoch know about that? Well, let me ask you, dear brother and sister in Christ, how do you know about it?

How do you know Jesus is coming with the angels? Simple answer, "God told me." Well God told him. God told Enoch that Jesus someday would come and that He would come back. That was Enoch. Now, what of an Enoch's commendation? It says, "Before he was taken out of this world, He was commended as one who pleased God." The commendation came before he was removed from the earth. Some kind of commendation. What is the nature of this? How did God give this commendation? Perhaps he spoke about Enoch to others. Somewhat like a God speaking to Satan, about Job.

"Have you considered my servant Job?" "He is blameless, and upright. A man who fears God and shuns evil." So that's God boasting about you. You're in for some trouble. If God's boasting about you to Satan, I guess. But maybe it was like that. Maybe God boasted about Enoch to some others to the angels. Maybe he spoke to Enoch in some audible way, similar to what he did with his only begotten son, when he said, "You are My Son, whom I love. With you, I am well pleased." Maybe God did that. Maybe he just spoke into his heart, by the power of the spirit as he does now, with all true believers in Christ. How God testifies with our spirits that we are children of God.

And maybe in a similar way, he testified with Enoch's spirit that he was pleasing to God. He was commended but it happened before he was taken out of the world. And that commendation only came by faith. It was by faith that he was commended because it's impossible to please God without faith. That's why verse six, comes in to explain that. And so we know it was only by faith that he received that commendation. And what was faith's extraordinary reward and Enoch's case. Well, he was translated directly into heaven. Look at the Verse, "By faith Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. He could not be found because God had taken him away, for before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God."

Now in Genesis 5, you could probably get this... Come to this conclusion without Hebrews 11:5 making it very clear. Genesis five, is one of the dreariest chapters in the Bible. It traces out the lineage from Adam down to Noah. And beyond Noah to his sons. And there's just this dreary, wearisome refrain, but Adam who lives so many years and had other sons and daughters, and then he died. And then Seth who lived so many years and had other sons and daughters and then he died. And Enos and then he died, and Kenan and then he died, and all of them right on down... But then there's this one individual Enoch. He walked with God and he could not be found. He just disappears, from the scene and Hebrews 11:5 confirms that he did not die.

He did not experience death and he could not be found. The word... And translated in the KJV, is that he was translated, the idea is he was moved from one place to the next, taken right up. And this is an active and incredible grace on God's part. Why do I say this? Because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Enoch wasn't a perfect man, wasn't sinless. There's no testimony of

And we know from Roman 6:23 that the wages of sin is what? Well it's death. And so God, by grace spared the just punishment of Enoch's sin and did not allow him to die, but just translated him directly into heaven. Incredible gift of grace. This is a picture of that final generation, we read 1 Corinthians 15, and that generation of believers. "I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed." And he's translated he doesn't die in the ordinary way.

Now, what actually happened to Enoch's mortal body? I don't know. I can only speculate. I know that scripture says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, and that Paul yearned to be liberated from the body of death, the body of decay. It's no great blessing to be still in a body, like that. After, what, 4000, I don't know how many thousands of years now for him. So, in some mysterious way, he must have been removed from the body, which is ordinarily called death, but the verse tells us that he didn't experience death in the ordinary way. And so we're at the limits of our understanding. But Enoch did not die, as ordinary people do. And so in summary, we have Enoch who walked with God by faith, he pleased God by faith, and God amazingly rewarded him by faith.

I think about the words that one pastor said, William Preston, he was dying his family was around his death bed and he said these incredible words, "Blessed be God. Though I shall change my place, I shall not change my company. What a sweet statement. Oh, that, that may be said dear brother and sister about you. The death is actually no big change when it comes to who I'm living with. I've been living with God, all this time. And Now I'm going to keep living with him, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And Andy and I were talking recently about the kinds of things that are said at funerals. Wouldn't it be great to have this one summation on your life? He, she walked with God.

Now we come to Noah of whom it's also said that he walked with God. Noah as an example of the witness that faith has in an unbelieving world, look in verse seven, "By faith, Noah when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith." Now Noah's faith again is established by the rules of logic that we have from verse 6, "Without faith, it's impossible to please God."

But there's clear commendation of Noah in the text, says in Genesis 6:9, as I already mentioned, This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man. Stop right there. How does a sinner get to be a righteous man? Only by faith in Jesus Christ. It's the only possible way for a sinner to be made righteous, through faith in Christ, and so that's how you know right away, that Noah had faith. But he's also commended because he was blameless, among the people of his time and he walked with God. And then after the flood, he gets off the... Off the ark and he offers to God some of the clean animals as a burnt offering, and it says there that the Lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice, he is pleased with Noah. And so he is commended as one who pleased God and we know from verse six, it's impossible without faith. And so, no, Noah had faith. He was a man of faith, though the word has never mentioned in reference to him.

But what the verse does do, is it gives us six outcomes of Noah's faith.

1) Noah’s Faith Heeded a Warning of an Invisible Danger

 First of all, Noah's faith heeded a warning of invisible danger because he had faith. Now listen, Noah had faith long before God warned him about the flood. For centuries he had been walking by faith and living by faith, he lived that kind of life. It wasn't that faith suddenly sprang up at that point. He walked with God all those years. But then, Noah's faith it says heeded a warning of invisible danger in Genesis six, 11, and 12, it says, "Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and was full of violence. And God saw how corrupt the earth had become for all the people on Earth had corrupted their ways." That's what God was seeing. "Every inclination of the heart of man was only evil all the time."

And so God then warned Noah of a coming flood. The word warn in the original language, same word used twice in Matthew chapter two, in reference to the Magi. They were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod. Joseph later in Matthew two, warned in a dream not to go to Archelaus, but instead ended up in Nazareth. Same thing, the idea of a warning coming by a vision, or something, in a dream. And in this same way Noah is warned. God communicated very clearly of a coming flood, and this was the thing not seen. God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the Earth is filled with violence, because of them I'm going, surely going to destroy both them and the Earth. So make for yourself an ark of cypress wood..." And then Genesis 6:17, "I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens. Every creature that has the breath of life in it, everything on earth will perish." So he has been given these words by God of a coming flood, that's going to drown the earth.

Now, there is no physical evidence of this coming flood, nothing. You could not prove it by science, there is no precedent for it. Nothing like this has ever happened. And you can picture in your mind's eye this man, this... By the perspective of unbelief maniac building a huge boat, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of dry land because there's a coming flood. Incredible faith no evidence whatsoever, just the word of God in his heart, and he believed it. And you took it seriously. Heeded this warning. Now remember, Hebrews 11:1, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction, the rebuke of things not seen." This is a thing not seen. The flood could not be seen, it's coming, it's a future issue.

And he was rebuked by it, he realized that he was essentially a sinner too. And that if he rebelled against God's command to build an ark, he would parish like the rest of them. No difference. And so, he was convicted by this and he was warned by it. Friends, the whole Book of Hebrews is a warning epistle, it's a warning to us. It warns us not to drift away from Christ, not to turn away from Christ, not to fall away from Christ. It warns us of the hidden creeping dangers, the hardening dangers and effects of sin. It urges us to gather the brothers and sisters around us so that they pray for us and help us lest we be deceived by the power of sin, it warns us again and again of the dangers of apostasy and a final judgment on the apostates.

Do you heed these warnings? Are you taking these seriously by faith? Are you convicted and warned of things not seen. Not of a coming flood of water but of a coming flood of fire and judgment from God.

2) Noah’s Faith Prompted Holy Fear

Secondly, Noah's faith prompted holy fear. There was a fear reaction inside him. Created fear inside, he was moved by it. There's an emotion to it. This happens frequently with the prophets, Isaiah when he received from God the prophecy of the destruction of Babylon. In Isaiah 21, said this, "At this, my body was racked with pain. Pangs seize me like those of a woman in labor. I'm staggered by what I hear. I'm bewildered by what I see. My heart falters fear makes me tremble. The twilight I long for has become a horror to me." That's the reaction to the warning. An emotional reaction of fear.

Or Daniel after he has a vision of among other things, Alexander the great and the coming judgment, the shaggy goat and all that. Daniel 8:27, at the end of all that vision, prophecy of the future, "I, Daniel, was exhausted and lay ill for several days. Then I got up and went about the king's business. I was appalled by the vision, it was beyond understanding." It's an emotional reaction to this. Back at 3:16, "I heard, and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept in my bones, and my legs trembled" at the prophetic word.

We should tremble when we consider the coming wrath, friends. We should tremble at it. It should move us to fear. There should be a fear in us. Jesus told us to, "not fear those who kill the body and after that, they can do nothing but fear the one who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, I tell you fear him." And so there's a fear in us. The Book of Revelations describes plagues that are going to be poured out on the Earth, amounting to the slaughter of a third of all mankind. That would be several billion people dead. The sea turned to blood. Is that coming or not?

And after that, something worse eternity in hell is worse than anything that could happen here on Earth. And so, Noah's faith moved him to fear. He feared the coming judgment. And we should fear too and it should move us to want to save ourselves, and our families, and our friends, and even total strangers from the wrath to come. And so it says in 2 Corinthians 5:11, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men." We should be out there persuading people and we should flee to Christ." I can't do any better than at this moment. Plead with you to flee to Christ. He is the only refuge from the coming wrath. There is no other Ark to get on. There's no other place to go to escape the coming wrath, it's only Jesus. And Jesus stood under the wrath of God and fully satisfied as we sang earlier. He has absorbed our wrath. Stand under him and you will be saved, trust in Him.

3) Noah’s Faith Resulted in Obedience

A third outcome of Noah's faith is it resulted in obedience. By faith Noah moved with holy fear. Built an ark prepared an ark, he didn't stay paralyzed with fear, he obeyed what God told him to do. And God was very specific about it. "So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks." He's got everything worked out. This is what you ought to do. Don't just go do good works. Go build an ark specifically.

And so, he obeyed. Took him seems like in Scripture, 120 years to do. 120 years of obedience building, building, building that Ark. Noah's faith was genuine, it wasn't spurious faith, it wasn't fake faith. James chapter two says, "What kind asks this question? What kind of faith saves someone?" Suppose a man has faith and he has no deeds, can that kind of faith save him? Answer is no. Faith apart from deeds is dead. Noah's faith in the language of James 2, was working together with his deeds. And it was proved genuine, by his deeds. It was made complete by what he did. And so it is, Noah's obedience was essential to the salvation of himself and his family had to obey. And so at the end of Genesis six in verse 22, it says, "Noah did everything just as God commanded him."

And so his faith produced obedience. So was Noah saved by his works? Was he saved by his works? Well, yes and no. Or if you prefer no and yes. I don't care what order. But had he not built the ark would he have drowned? I'm thinking so. Amen. I'm thinking he drowns. Maybe God, like Ester, God raises someone else to build the ark but he drowns. So yes, he was saved by building the Ark. But not ultimately and you know it. We're talking about a different kind of saved. Saved from God's wrath by his works, never. And so the scripture says very plainly in Genesis 6:7-8 "I will wipe mankind… from the face of the Earth… But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." What's another word for favor, there? How about grace? Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and so it is by grace that he was saved through faith, just like everyone else. And just consider the Ark itself. It was no vehicle of human self-salvation. It had no rudder friends, as far as we know. No steering wheel, there's no command to steer the thing, there's no mass, no sails, no need for nautical training.

Was there no danger that the ark would sink? Well, at the human level, there was absolute danger that the ark would sink. As the flood developed and the water rose higher and higher, would there not have been still peaks visible early on while the arc was floating? Was there no danger that they would crash into those peaks and a gash in the side and the thing would go to the bottom? There was every physical danger. And so Noah was entirely in the hands of God's grace, even while he had been obedient. God directed that Ark where he wanted it to go and in the end, brought it safely through.

And so he was saved by grace through faith, but he used means didn't he? And so it is with us. You want to save yourself and your family, God has laid out some means for you. First and foremost, the gospel message you must speak it, you must believe it, you must preach it to your children. This is the means by which God has laid out salvation. We are saved by this message. Proclaim it every day, talk about it. And he's laid out means whereby you can continue to grow in your salvation. The Word of God, take it in, read it, feed on it, confess your sins, pray continually. Be involved in church, have people around you, praying for you. These are means they're means, they're means. And so that's what God has ordained for final salvation.

4) Noah’s Faith Saved His Family

Outcome number four, Noah's faith saved his family. "By faith Noah when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an Ark to save his family." God made a covenant with Noah, to save, not only him, but his family and this was the key to everything. God was intending procreation wasn't he? Clearly. That's why two of every animal came on board, and so we needed not an end, an extinction to the human race. And so Noah and his wife, and Noah's sons and their wives were saved through. And so there was an umbrella effect of Noah's faith. His faith in some mysterious way, sanctified and protected his family.

And so we see this in this godly man, a godly concern for the salvation of his wife, and a godly concern for a salvation of his children and certainly I don't think it's too far to go beyond that, a multi-generational vision of grandchildren and great grandchildren on from there.

And so, a faith-filled man and woman, a parent is going to have a concern for the salvation of their children and a concern for the salvation of their grand children and great grand children. You're not going to be like Hezekiah saying, "Well, at least there's going to be peace in my lifetime, I don't really care what happens after that." Well, Manasseh happened after that. Thinking he wasn't a great father. Think a little about your grandkids and your great grandkids. What kind of legacy are you leaving? And yet, for all of that, every single individual him or herself must repent and believe in Jesus, you can't bring your kids to heaven. All you can do is provide for them an example of godly living, of your faith, preach the Gospel to them, surround them with people who will speak God's word into their lives, provide for them physically the other things of being a good parent, but the rest is up to God. And they themselves must repent and believe.

5) Noah’s Faith Condemned the World

Outcome number five, by his faith he condemned the world. Two sentences quickly on what this means. First and foremost, his example and his preaching condemned the world. Day after day, after day, he's out there living by faith, he's a godly man blameless in this era... In that era, and he is preaching second Peter two calls him a preacher of righteousness. Dear friends, how would you like a ministry like that? 120 years of faith-filled preaching and not a single convert, not one. No one else got on the Ark with him. No one else. Yes, but look at the boldness, the consistency, the perseverance of that kind of ministry.

Like Jeremiah, I'm going to send you to people and I'm telling you, right now, they will not listen but they will have no excuse because I sent a man to them. And He preached the truth and you never listened. And I know that's not our favorite outcome of evangelism. But it is a valid outcome. Be faithful and share the gospel and it could be that God was just raising you up as a witness against them on judgment day. I sent you this person, and they shared with you plainly and you did not believe you are without excuse. God didn't owe it to them, but I'm just saying by this He condemned the world by his example, and by his preaching.

But secondly, by his building of the Ark, by faith. The Ark's little by little making progress, little by little. The keel is laid the ribs are late. The structural member's going up. The deck is going up. Rafters are up now. It's like an hour-glass ticking away the final moments of that the world had then then was. Every step of progress, he made by faith, condemn the world. And when finally by faith, he finished the Ark and he obeyed when God said, "Get on the Ark now," when he got on and God shut him in the world was condemned at that moment. It was done the world was going to be judged.

6) Noah’s Faith Made Him and Heir of the Righteousness that Comes by Faith

And then finally, outcome number six, he became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. What does this mean to me? That he is saved by Jesus? Just like you and me. There is a righteousness that comes by faith, it comes by Jesus Christ. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. That's the righteousness that was Noah's. It was a gift of grace through Jesus Christ. And He became it says an heir of the righteousness. He didn't get it all, he still doesn't have it all.

Not until we are in our resurrection bodies in a resurrected world, will we have all of the righteousness God intends to give us. But he became by faith, an heir of that righteousness.

So friends, applications all true faith points to Christ. I was talking to a friend this morning, dear friend, and saying, "Isn't it a sweet how all these heroes of the faith did something incredible and great Jesus did it better in every case." Jesus walked with God better than Enoch did.

Jesus was translated in a more glorious way than Enoch. Right through the heavens to the right hand of God. Enoch's on his face right now in front of Jesus. Jesus obeyed God better than Noah, he built a better Ark and a better salvation for His children. And so from Enoch, first of all, let's celebrate Jesus. But let's learn from these human examples from Enoch, walk with God, this week. Walk with God. Just learn what it means to walk with God, and just saturate every moment of your life with God.

And then concerning Noah, save your family. Build an ark to save your family. I don't mean a literal wooden ark. God's not telling you to do that. But there is a different judgment coming and there's a different way of deliverance. Do that. Pray for them to come to faith in Christ, Saturate their hearts with the Gospel. Pray for extended family members, Noah built an Ark, to save his family. Preach the gospel to save yours. Live the gospel to save yours. And then toward the world, Noah was a preacher of righteousness. By our faith perhaps we're going to condemn the world. I don't know.

God may have another 200 or 300-400 years or more of history still yet to come. But God still wants us to live godly, and upright lives in this corrupt age. Final application just concerns the Lord's supper, about which we are to turn. Some day, because of our faith in Christ, we're going to sit at table with Jesus. What I urge you to do now is prepare your hearts to receive the blessing of the Lord's supper, and to get ready to confess your sin, and to receive from him the grace that He wants to mediate to you through this. Let's pray.

Well, this morning we have a chance to look at a hero of the faith, this man Abel. And as I was thinking about this topic today and what's flowing from Abel's example, there's one word in particular that has floated to the top, and that's that word, the word sacrifice. So I've been meditating much on the topic of sacrifice in the Christian life and I was thinking about just those great moments in the Bible, those moments where you could say, "I would love to have been there when that happened." And there's so many visually dramatic moments. What would have it been like to be there when the walls of Jericho fell? Just an awesome display of God's power, or to be there when Jesus stilled the storm? Said, "Peace be still," and everything got quiet. Or when Lazarus was raised from the dead? Awesome, dramatic moments. Second coming of Christ, you know, to see the armies of Heaven and all of the glory.

And then there are other moments in redemptive history that are not so dramatic, but still very, very significant. And I have in mind one simple moment in Jesus' life and ministry, it's recorded for us in Luke 21. And it's the moment in which Jesus is watching all of these rich people put all of this money into this offering, and here's this widow and in her hand are these two little copper coins, and she just quietly goes up, drops them in, and walks away. That's just an incredibly significant moment for me in redemptive history. I can't go beyond what the text says. I will not say that's the greatest gift that has ever been offered, but Jesus told us it was more than any of the other people put in that day. And it is immortalized for us. And he explained it saying that she put in everything she had to live on, but they gave out of their abundance. The issue was sacrifice.

The issue was sacrifice, and that's what's in front of us, as we look at Abel. We're looking at the topic of sacrifice and I've been thinking about it a lot, and it's really quite a powerful thing. Because here in the Book of Hebrews, we have the clear explication that animal sacrifice is finished, it's over forever. We've learned things about animal sacrifice, we've learned lessons from the animal sacrificial system. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. We've also learned that the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin, that animal sacrifice was established by God as a temporary means to point to the cross of Jesus Christ. And the finished work of Christ on the cross is sufficient for our sins. But once Christ has died on the cross, that once-for-all sacrifice, animal sacrifice is done forever, it's obsolete, it's gone, and will be forever. God will never again accept animals as a form of worship. It's done. So all of the Book of Hebrews gives us the end of the animal sacrificial system, but here in Hebrews 11:4, we have the beginning of the animal sacrificial system, where it all started. And this man Abel who gave a sacrifice by faith.

Now, I've said before that the lessons of the animal sacrificial system, as they point to the cross, for me are three. That the animal sacrificial system teaches that all sin deserves a death penalty, that the death penalty can be paid by a substitute, but the substitute cannot be an animal. But that's not all that the animal sacrificial system has to teach us as Christians, not by a long shot. The fact of the matter is, those are the lessons as they lead in what theologians call soteriology or the doctrine of salvation, how sinners can be saved, yes. But having been justified, what kind of lives shall we live? The sacrificial system still has more to teach us. And we are to be living lives of sacrifice to Almighty God, that by faith, we will offer every moment of the day a sacrifice well pleasing to God, and Abel's our example in that. And so, that's what's in front of us today.

Now last week, we saw, in Hebrews 11:6, basic principle of a relationship with God that we are to come to God and to please God and to be rewarded by him. And then Hebrews 11:6 tells us how to do that. It uses a double negative, frankly, "Without faith, it's impossible to please God." Without faith, it's impossible to come to God. Without faith, we cannot be rewarded by God. Anything that's not done from faith will not be rewarded by God. We saw that last week. We apply that to Abel, Enoch, and Noah in a big picture sense. We're going back now to look in more detail at Abel. But the reason to the author interrupts this account of pre-flood saints, these godly men who lived before the flood, is to give us the principle by which he has the right to bring them in and give them as examples of faith.

Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, their accounts are written briefly in the Book of Genesis, but faith is not mentioned in connection with any of those three. You don't see anything, any mention of faith connected with Abel or with Enoch or Noah. And so the author has to tell us why does he have the right to bring them forward as examples of faith. And he is saying that there's an abiding principle here, in general, for all human beings, at every era of human history, "without faith it is impossible to please God. And so therefore, if Abel pleased God, he did it by faith. If Enoch pleased God and was commended, he did it by faith. If Noah built an ark to please God, he did it by faith. It's a principle. So we established that principal last time, but now we go back and we look in more detail, specifically at Abel.

And in verse 4, we have the beginning of patterns of human worship, the beginning of human worship offered up to God. Look at verse 4, "By faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith, he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith, he still speaks even though he is dead."

So we have the beginning of the history of faith. Now, I think it's possible that in Genesis 3, after the fall, there's some elements of faith, for example, Adam saying that Eve would be the mother of all living, etcetera. Or Eve's statement, "With the help of God, I've brought forth a man." But here we have, I think, is clearly the beginning of human reaching out to God, what we call human religion or human sacrifice with the story of Cain and Abel. So it's the beginning of religion, it's the beginning of animal sacrifice, clearly, it's the beginning of the history of faith.

Now, the account in Genesis 4 reads like this, "Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought forth some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord, but Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of the flock." So this is the beginning of humans reaching up to God, of patterns of worship, of offerings up to God, Cain and Abel. Now, we may ask, How is it that Abel knew to bring forth an animal, how did he know to bring forth fat portions from some of the firstborn of the flock? And I think this had to be as a result of a direct command of Almighty God. I don't think that Abel would have done this, I don't think he would have thought to do it. We know at the end of Chapter 3, in Genesis, that God killed some animals and covered them up with animal skins to cover their nakedness. But then this should be established as a pattern of human worship that took over from that point on. Immediately, in Genesis 4, we have animal sacrifice. In Noah, we clearly have patterns of sacrifice, animal sacrifice. And then Abraham did it and eventually established in the Law of Moses. There is no doubt about it, but it happens right away.

And Abel would, I think, not have known to do this. It's not intuitively obvious that this is something we should do. It's clear from the law of Moses that God wanted it done, he commanded the Israelites to do it, but I think he also commanded Cain and Abel to do it as well. And so, there's indications right in the text when the Lord saw that Cain was very disappointed that he had not accepted his vegetable offering or his fruit offering, he was very angry and very distressed, and the Lord challenges him, he says, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you, but you must master it." So clearly, he's saying, "you didn't do what was right. You did something wrong by bringing this fruit offering. You sinned." And so, reading between the lines, you just have to believe that God plainly told Cain and Abel what to do. He wanted animal sacrifice.

We also know, just from the analogy of faith, from Romans 10:17, faith comes from hearing the word. And so as God speaks the word, then faith springs up. And so if it is true that Abel offered by faith, the sacrifice, then it had to be some word to hang his faith on. And so God spoke words to them. He commanded them what to do. And so, as Abel was bringing the fat portions from some of the firstborn of the flock, he must have been thinking about this. "This is new. I mean, what was it like? I'm offering a dead animal, a bloody animal to God and reasoning some things out." he knew the story of his parents, of Adam and Eve and their eviction from the garden of Eden. We don't know how much longer or later this is, how many years, we have no sense of it, but it's just in the course of time this offering is brought.

Things Abel Must Have Understood by Faith About the Animal Sacrifice

But there are just some things that Abel must have reasoned out by faith, he must have understood by faith. He knew, for example, that God is holy and cannot tolerate sin.

I mean, he must have had that lesson already established before him, maybe the earth was already withering and dying before his very eyes, the curse already taking effect. That God was righteous in driving man out of the Garden of Eden and bringing this curse on the human race. That he, Abel, was himself a guilty sinner, that he deserved the death penalty, he deserved to die. He must have known this by faith. And that God was merciful and willing to accept a sacrifice, a substitute, in his place, that this is what the significance of the sacrificial system was. These are things he must have reasoned out by faith. And perhaps he had the early glimmerings of a possibility of looking ahead to Christ, of seeing Christ in the animal sacrifice.

Now next week, when we talk about Enoch, we're going to see that God, in some amazing way, gave Enoch a preview of the second coming of Christ. The Lord is coming with thousands of angels to whip up on all the ungodly people. We'll talk about that next week, but if Enoch, seventh from Adam, knew that Jesus was going to come again, then it shouldn't shock us to know that Abel could reason out that Jesus was going to come the first time. And that these animal sacrifices were in some shadowy sort of way portending a future in Christ. We know from this very chapter, in Hebrews 11:26, that it was by faith in Christ that Moses turned his back on the wealth and the pleasures of Egypt, by faith in Christ. And so I believe that he was looking to Christ as he offered up these animals. He was in some shadowy way understanding Christ as he offered this sacrifice.

And now we come to the key principle of all of this. And that is that by faith, Abel was recognized as a righteous man, and as a result of that, his offering was pleasing to God. There is a very clear order here. Faith transforms the heart, it transforms the very relationship of the sinner with Almighty God so that that sinner is made right in the sight of God, and then his or her offerings can be accepted by such a Holy God. And so we have, in Genesis 4, it says, "The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering." So there's a sense of a two-part here, it's on the man and his work, and the individual comes first. And the overriding principle of scripture here, again and again, there is no way for sinners like you and me to be made right in the sight of a Holy God other than then by faith. We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ. Every sinner that has ever lived that is justified is justified only by faith in Jesus Christ.

Abel was justified by faith in Christ. He believed God's Word, he trusted in him and the Christ who was to come later, and he was justified. And so God looked, not just with favor, but with grace. He looked at Abel by grace and he saw him in Christ, by grace. And then as a result, his offering was acceptable. But on Cain, he did not look with grace. And on his offering, he did not look with grace. And so we have a clear comparison here between these two. Abel was commended as righteous. God commended him as a righteous man. And we know, from Romans 3, "There is no one righteous, not even one. No one who understands, there's no one who seeks God... There's no one who does what is good, not even one." And so that would include Abel. And so, Abel was justified by faith in Christ, even at that early stage, but Cain was not.

The Comparison with Cain

And so we have this clear comparison with Cain. And the verse we're looking at draws out that comparison, verse 4, "By faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did," or as the King James Version gives us, "a more excellent sacrifice," a more excellent. And so, the two directly compared. So this is what the account says, "In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord, but Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel in his offering, but on Cain and his offering, he did not look with favor." I believe, in Cain, we have the first religious hypocrite. We have an ungodly man who is carrying on the outward appearance of religion but is heart is far from God. He is a religious innovator. He is starting his own religion, his own faith, his own cult.

I don't think this is unkind to say this, God didn't command this first-fruits offering, it wasn't something he told them to do. He wanted them to bring animals and Cain wouldn't do it. In my opinion, I think it was because of their occupations that Abel was a tender of the flocks and Cain worked out in the gardens and he didn't want to go cap in hand to his brother and say, "Hey brother, could you give me a lamb or sheep so I can worship God?" It's a possibility, I don't really know, but in any case, we have to imagine there's some kind of pride. Cain was a religious innovator, he was coming up with his own religion, he was coming up with his own way to approach God. "This is how I'm going to come in. God better be happy with it. He better be pleased with what I bring." The ultimate end of this self-style pattern of worship in the Old Testament was what the Israelites did in sacrificing their own children to Baal.

And God says very clearly, through Jeremiah, "Something I did not command, nor did it enter into my mind." Why did you do it then? This isn't what I told you to do." So that's the end of it. And you may think I'm being a little harsh to go from a first-fruit offering all the way to sacrificing children to Baal, but it's all the same thing. It's what some have called will worship for that initiating from your own heart, "I will do this, this is the religion I will have. This is the God I will serve, this is how it's going to be." And thus Cain and Abel's stand is two representative men. With Cain, we have the outer pattern of religion in a self-styled worship seeped with pride, with murderous rage toward his brother who is doing what's right and pleases God. Talk more about that in a moment. That's what we have with Cain, religious nominalism, looking good on the outside, but inside, full of corruption. And then we have, with Abel, a justified sinner, a man made right by his faith, offering to God the sacrifices God has commanded him to offer, following the Word of God.

And so Abel's offering was done in obedience to God's revealed will, an obedience to the Word of God, but Cain's was not. Abel's offering was made by faith in an invisible God. Cain's was not. Abel's offering was made from a transformed heart, in justified position with God, in a willing mind and willing love for God. Cain's was not. Abel offered to God the best that he had. He offered fat portions from some of the firstlings of the lambs. It says it's the best stuff he has, the most precious and the most valuable thing he had to offer.

As I've been doing Scripture memorization in the Book of Malachi, and going over Malachi again and again, and I've shared some insights from Malachi, but probably the central lesson for me of this minor prophet Malachi, he's dealing with a corrupted era of the priesthood, the Levites, who had lost their way, who were not doing I think anything by faith. And who had found the entire animal sacrificial system at that point a terrible burden to them. And they were trying to cheat God. And so, Malachi brings these condemnations against them. He said, "'It is you O priest who have shown contempt for my name.' But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for your name?' 'You place defiled food on my altar.' But you ask, 'How have we defiled you?' 'By saying that the Lord's Table is contemptible. When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor, would he be pleased with you, would he accept you?' Says the Lord Almighty… 'O, that one of you would shut the temple doors so that you would stop lighting useless fires on my altar. I am not pleased with you,' says the Lord Almighty. 'And I will accept no offering from your hands.'"

Do you just see how Hebrews 11:6 clicks in there? I am not pleased with you, because the offering you're making is not made by faith. You're bringing me blind, crippled, and diseased animals, thinking you can cheat me. He says, "I will accept no offering from your hands." "My name will be great among the nations. From the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name. Because my name will be great among the nations." That brings us into at First Baptist Durham. This is us in every place from the rising to the setting of the sun pure offerings will be brought. I'll get to that later, at the end of the sermon. God still wants sacrifice, pure sacrifices offered to him. But he says to these priests you profane it, by saying of the Lord's table, it is defiled and of its food is contemptible, and you say "What a burden," and you sniff at it contemptuously. I think that's the spirit of Cain. I don't think that they were genuinely offering to God any sacrifice. I don't think they were doing anything by faith, it was a burden to have to do it, it was boring, it was crushing them. They wish they could throw it off to stop doing these religious things, but they kind of had to do it, they were trapped into it, but they thought that they could get by, maybe they could just bring the blind and diseased animals and just throw those toward God.

Oh, I can't tell you how convicting that whole thing is for me. I don't want to live like that brothers and sisters. I don't want to live like that, I don't want to throw God my blind and crippled the diseased animals. I want to give them the fat portions from the first of my flock every day and I know the time for animal sacrifice is over, but the time for sacrifice is not over. I want to give him my best. And Abel gave by faith, gave from a heart of love, he gave his best to God. And so, I want to worship him, I want to honor him, I want to glorify God, that is the spirit of faith, because I believe he exists, and I believe that he rewards those who earnestly seek him and so I want to give a life of sacrifice to God.

The Commendation of Abel’s Faith

And so, we see the commendation of Abel's faith again by faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain through which he was commended as righteous. God commending him by accepting his gifts. And so, by means of these offerings came his commendation. That was how he put his faith on display and through that he was commended as a righteous man. He was not justified by works, but the works showed his justified heart. Do you see?

The works flowed from a right heart that God had made right by faith and out of that came this offering, this sacrifice. And so, God accepted his offering. And you know what's interesting in the account in Genesis? Both Abel and Cain knew that God had accepted Abel's offering, but had not accepted Cain's offering. How did they know? God is invisible, he was speaking only by faith, he was speaking perhaps in some amazing ways back then, but he still wasn't always there. That's how Adam and Eve sinned, and then they heard God coming and then they were afraid. You see, God's still invisible, you still need to love him and serve him by faith and so he wasn't there. And a moment later when in the account when Cain kills his brother Abel, he's not thinking God's immediately here watching everything I'm doing. But how was it that both Abel and Cain knew that God had commended and had accepted Abel's offering and not Cain's? Well, I don't know, that's my final answer, but I have a more kind of interesting speculation, alright? I don't know how they knew but they both knew, clearly they both knew.

AW Pink things that God sent fire out of the presence of God and consumed Abel's offering, burned up. But there's Cain's untouched. And this is something actually God doesn't just do once or twice, he does it actually multiple times in the Old Testament. For example, in Leviticus 9:24, "Fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown." So maybe fire came down from heaven on Abel's offerings, and there's Cain's vegetables and fruit untouched. Happened with Elijah, with the prophets of Vail on Mount Carmel, fire came down and burned up the sacrifice there. It happened with Gideon when the Angel of the Lord, and fire came out from the rock and burned up the sacrifice. It actually is a regular pattern, it happens a lot, and so perhaps it happened back then. Alright, enough speculation. It is fun, but we shouldn't do too much of it, Amen. But in some way God testified, "I accept you and I accept your work," and he knew it and he was in some way commended as a righteous man.

How Abel Continues to Speak Even Though He Is Dead

And the Verse finishes in Verse 4, "By faith, he still speaks even though he is dead." So he's still commending to us the life of faith, he's still talking to us. How does he do that? Well, I think there are two ways that by faith he still speaks, even though he's dead. We know very well how Abel died. Verse 8 of Genesis 4, "Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let's go out to the field' and while they're in the field, Cain attacked his brother and Abel killed him." So we know the account, we know what happened, we know the significance of it spiritually in 1 John 3:12 of what it showed about Cain. It said, "Do not be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him, because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous." So that's what we know about Abel's death. But Hebrews 11:4 tells us something beyond Abel's death, after his death. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead. Well, there's two ways I think that I understand that. First is, he speaks to us from the Scripture, because Moses wrote down the account of Abel's life. Whenever we by faith read the living in an active Word of God that's sharper than any double edged sword, whenever we read an Old Testament story like this one, we are spoken to by it, Abel's talking to us and telling us, "Live by faith, sacrifice by faith, love by faith," Abel's telling us this.

I think that's a valid way to interpret this. I think it is a very good way and it's one of the two ways I do interpret. The other is that Abel's just still alive. He just doesn't have a body. He's alive, he's in heaven. He's up there in that heavenly Mount Zion. He's one of those disembodied spirits that we'll talk about in the next Chapter, Hebrews 12. "The spirits of righteous men made perfect." he is absent from the body, but he is present with the Lord. And so, Jesus said very plainly, "Do not fear those who kill the body and after that they can do nothing to you." So Cain couldn't kill Abel's soul. He also said concerning the resurrection of the dead, haven't you read what God says to you in the account of the burning bush. "'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,' he is not the God of the dead but of the living." So can we add Abel's name to that? I am the God of Abel and the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. He is Abel's God right now, and he is still speaking, he is communicating with other disembodied spirits up there. I sure hope he's not communicating directly to any of you. If that's happening, come and talk to me, that's weird. But the fact of the matter is, they are able to speak.

And so, I'm thinking about John 11:22 where Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me will live even though he dies." So by faith and whoever lives and believes me will never die. By faith Abel is still alive. By faith he's still speaking. We have in the Book of Revelation Chapter 6, The Martyrs, that are martyred during that terrible time are up there and they are waiting for their vengeance, and they're crying out to God, saying, "How long until we are avenged?" And they're told to wait a little longer until the full number of martyrs comes in. They're able to talk, though they don't have bodies yet. And so, by faith Abel still speaks.

Now next week, we're going to talk about Enoch and Noah. We're going to talk about walking by faith. We're going to talk about what Noah did. But Abel teaches us more than anything to live a life of sacrifice.

And I want to finish this sermon by looking at applications for us on this question of sacrifice. The fundamental application of the question of sacrifice is this. Nothing you do will be acceptable to God if you're not justified by faith. Yeah, let me speak very plainly, if you have never come to faith in Jesus Christ, if you have never trusted in him as your Lord and Savior, nothing that you do will be pleasing to God until you do, you have to do that first. You have to trust in Jesus.

And the gospel is very simple, it's not complicated, that God seeing that we could not save ourselves sent his own son in a human body. He was born of the Virgin Mary, he lived a sinless life. He walked on the earth, he did great mighty signs and wonders to show that he was not only human, but also God in the flesh. And he came to do all of those miracles and to give us an example, and to teach us many things, but primarily he came to die in our place as our substitute. And if you will only trust in him, if you just look to him by faith, all of your sins will instantly be forgiven. You'll be cleansed of all of your sins, your guilty conscience will be gone and you'll be instantly in a perfectly right relationship with God and you will continue in that for the rest of eternity. It's justification, you'll be made right. And after that then you can offer to God a lifetime of sacrifices. And now dear brothers and sisters, that's what I want to talk to you about, a lifetime of sacrifices.

Christmas is coming up. You've got your Christmas shopping done? Yeah, I'm a procrastinator on Christmas, I wait too long. I was talking to Ashley, our secretary, she's got all of her Christmas work done. I'm just nauseated by that, I'm in awe. I don't know how that can be. I'm waiting for those Christmas Eve sales. No, I'm not, that's terrible. But at any rate, I just wait, I wait too long. Actually though, I've done better this year than ever before. I actually have two gifts bought, so I'm... Yeah, you're like, "Boy pastor you're pathetic." Anyway, but Christmas is coming. Imagine Christmas morning and imagine a wife pulls that big gift out from under the tree and she looks at the tag, and it says on the tag "To my loving wife." She is excited. The wrapping paper is rich, it's nice looking and the gift is heavy, and she's excited. And husband just kind of lean in, smiling and he opens... She opens it up, rips the paper off, opens up and it's incredibly costly valuable gift. Something she could never have imagined that he would give. And just... She's moved to tears and she said, "Well, where did you buy it?" he said, "I didn't." "I'm sorry, I beg your pardon." "I didn't buy it." "Well, where'd you get it?" I actually found it on the curb, some guy left it and I just... I looked, I saw a tag, I thought it might be good for you. I actually didn't even know what it was, but now I'm excited. It looks like a good gift. So Merry Christmas."

How is she feeling at that moment? Is she feeling loved, is she feeling affirmed? Friends, that is not a sacrifice, it cost that man nothing. He didn't do anything, he didn't think about her, he didn't pay anything, all he did was pick it up and bring it home. Or imagine if he gave the exact same gift, he did pay for it, but he was angry at how much it cost. And he's just glum and frustrated at home. What's the matter with you? I don't know, just... What's the matter? Alright, fine, you dragged it out of me. I just can't believe I spent that much on your gift.  Really? Well, gee, I really want it now. I tell you, it is impossible to love another without cheerful sacrifice. If you don't give it cheerfully, it's not a gift. And if it's not sacrificial, if it costs you nothing, it's not a gift. Do you love God? Are you willing to sacrifice for him? Are you willing to give cheerfully? Thank you for Dave reading 2 Corinthians 9. God loves a cheerful giver, brother. I didn't tell you to read that. Praise God, the providence of God. God loves a cheerful giver, not just a giver. And so, we are called on here to give cheerfully, and to give sacrifice. Now, I think that the sacrificial system has something to teach us for the rest of our lives.

I was reading recently about the Scottish missionary David Livingston, who was primarily an explorer, but a solid Christian, a committed man, a missionary, but just more than anything, felt his calling to explore in the name of Christ, and to take the Gospel as far as he could using indigenous people to share and to reach out. An amazing man, really an amazing story. Mauled by a lion at one point, many tropical fevers, long months away from his wife and his children, tremendous pain and suffering and he was speaking at a missionary society, about his life, and they asked him about the question of sacrifice. And he said very famously this way. He said, "For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blessed reward, and helpful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? A way with the word and such a view, and a way with such a thought. It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege, anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with the forgoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory, which shall be revealed, in and for us, I never made a sacrifice."

Well, I was pondering those words, "I never made a sacrifice." And I'm thinking, "you know, I just... This is the way I work. I have kind of a mathematical exegetical brain, so I'm exegeting the statement, "I never made a sacrifice." And I worry that it may be literally true of many Christians or at least I didn't usually make a sacrifice. David Livingston did make sacrifices at one level. But I worry about a kind of a pattern of Christianity in which there's a lot going in, but there's just not much coming back out. I worry about it in reference to myself and dear brothers and sisters. I worry about it in reference to you. And I know it's easy when we first think about sacrifice, you think about money. I think this church is incredibly generous, financially. I never worry about money here. I'm grateful for the pattern of financial giving. It's more time and ourselves that I'm wondering about now. Are we like the rich people putting in a little extra from off the top of our lives? Or are we like the widow putting in everything that we have to live on? And these words, I don't mean them to hurt you or myself. I just want to be healed up into a higher level of healthy sacrifice for Jesus here in this church.

I think it's holding us back, friends. I think this issue of sacrifice is holding us back. And I just... I want to... Those of you that are making sacrifices, like David Livingston, and even gotten to that point of healthy joy in it, and you're able to understand what this brother meant when he said, "I never made a sacrifice." When I compare to what Jesus did on the cross for me, and when I compare to what is waiting for me in Heaven, I can't even think about the language of sacrifice, not like that. May your tribe increase. May your joy be great may you do more and more for Jesus until he finally takes you home, Amen. But if that isn't actually you that doesn't actually characterize the way you're living, if it's really the case that you're not ever pinched for Jesus, there's nothing actually squeezing on you in terms of the way you're living your life, I would just commend you to look at this word sacrifice again. It must be part of the healthy Christian life. We're not done with the animal sacrificial system, not from learning. We're done with animals, but we're not done with sacrifice.

And so, what I've done in your bulletin is list out all the places I could think of in the New Testament that use sacrificial language for Christians. We're not done with sacrifice, we're supposed to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, start there. Every day just say, God my body is yours to command. I'm giving you my day, I'm giving you my energy and my muscles, I'm giving you myself today. 1 Peter 2 says that we are a holy priesthood offering acceptable sacrifice, and offering living sacrifices up to God. The image there I think is one of a lost world, and we are declaring the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light. This is witnessing. We are to be witnesses, we are to offer up a sacrifice of witness to a lost world. And it needs to cost you something to be a witness in this world. Cost you some reputation, cost you some convenience, cost you a Saturday morning outreach, cost you a Sunday afternoon, spent getting to know your neighbors or something like that. There have to be some sacrifices or we're not actually going to be reaching out like we should in this area. And so, the sacrificial language is there.

What about our daily lives? Ephesians 5:2 says, we should live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, we should be offering our love horizontally to our spouses, our children, our brothers and sisters and then the church reaching out, we are to live a life of love. Every moment a fragrant offering and sacrifice of love, sacrificial language. 2 Timothy 4:6, Paul says, "I'm already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure." Willing to die even that your death may be a sacrifice poured out for God, how you die, and then take that and then how you live like a dying person, taking up your cross everyday and just dying daily. Paul says that in one place, I die daily. Every day I die. And so, being poured out, let your life be a poured out drink offering to God. Philippians 4:18, he talks about the money that the Philippian Christian sent. He says, "I've received your gift." "They are a fragrant offering and acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God." It's money, so give your money by faith and it's an offering pleasing to God, that's a sacrifice.

And then there's just simply praise, later in the same book, Hebrews 13:15, it talks about corporate worship, "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise the fruit of lips that confess his name." Sacrifice your praise, away with your cold heart, don't come in here with a cold heart on Sunday mornings. Stir yourself up, say awake my soul and sing, put your body into it, sing it, especially if it's not your favorite song. That's the time to do it. Especially if it's not your favorite song, sing it, God will know what you're doing and you'll sing to the praise of God. I've talked recently to a few of you about again, my hatred of fish of seafood. And guys, listen, it's just a defect. I would have it changed if I could, but I know I'm different from Jesus, he likes it, I don't. There's a big problem. But I tell you this, if I were ever to go to our brother and sister's house, and they didn't know me, and they served me fish, I have only one job. And that's to eat it in such a way that they will not know what I truly feel about the fish itself. But looking beyond it to the love in making it for me, that I can eat it by faith to the glory of God and my reward will be far greater than anyone else's that was sitting at that table at that moment. Far greater. Because it wasn't my favorite dinner and I ate it in love, and by faith I got it down, somehow.

And so when the song isn't your favorite or whatever, still will you offer to God a sacrifice and praise the fruit of lips that confess his name? To sacrifice, if it costs you something. To see to the brothers and sisters that are cooking for you, and just know they mean to please, they aim to please. And so, if they serve you fish, eat it and thank him for it, and praise him for it. And then Hebrews 13:16, in general, we are to do good and to share with other people for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. It's just any good work, it's a sacrifice. We are to be living lives woven through a sacrifice. Please, take this concept back to God and say, "Lord, am I like Abel, am I offering to you a sacrifice that pleases you, or am I coasting? Am I just like those rich people in Luke 21, just giving out of the abundance? Or am I like the widow giving everything I have to live on?" Close with me in prayer.

Well, I stand before you today a truly blessed man, a man who is happy because I believe that I serve every day, a living God. And I believe that for me the best things are all yet to come, that someday I will come into a vast rich reward at the end of a life of faith. I truly believe that. And that confidence, that happiness that fills me right now as I speak to you, flows from the truths that are, I think, best captured in one verse in the Bible, Hebrews 11:6 that's in front of us today. And that verse, and the themes that come from that verse teach me how to live and teach me what I ought to live for. What should be the central driving force of my life. Hebrews 11:6 says, "Without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently or earnestly seek him." But I want to ask you today as you assemble here, what is it you are living for? What is it that motivates you every day?

What is the driving principle of your life? Why are you alive? What do you live for? Reading Tim Keller's book, The Reason For God, and in a foot note at the end of the book, he gives a series of God's substitutes that people can live for. Very enlightening for me to read that list, and the dangers that come from living for those kinds of God's substitutes. He just gives a cautionary set of warnings to you if you live for this or that or the other God's substitute. For example, if you center your life and your identity on a spouse or a prospective spouse then in some way you'll be emotionally dependent on that individual, you'll be jealous and controlling, and the other person's problems will be overwhelming to you. If on the other hand you center your life and identity on your children, you'll try to live your life through your children until they resent you or will have no self-identity of their own. And at worst, you may abuse them when they disappoint you.

If you center your life and identity on your work, your career, then you're going to be a driven workaholic and a boring and shallow person. And worse, you'll lose family and friends, and if your career goes poorly, you're going to develop deep depression. If your God substitute is money and possessions you're going to be eaten up with worry and jealousy about money, you'll be willing perhaps to do unethical things to maintain your lifestyle, which will eventually blow up your life. If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification, comfort, you're going to find yourself getting addicted to something. You will become chained to whatever escape strategy you choose for your life and by that you will live escaping the hardness that you perceive in life. If your God's substitute is relationships and human approval, you're going to be constantly overly hurt by criticism. You're going to be always losing friends, you're going to fear confronting others and therefore, you'll become yourself a worthless friend.

If you center your life and identity on some noble cause, and you live for that noble cause, you will eventually divide the world into good people and bad people based on your cause. You will tend to demonize your opponents, ironically, you're going to end up being controlled by your opponents. Frankly, without them you would have no purpose to live. And if you center your life and identity on religion, man-centered morality, you will, if you are living up to your religious and moral standards, be proud, self-righteous and cruel. If you don't live up to your moral standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating to you.

Now, that's just a partial list of God's substitutes but I think it's a good one. You know what the Bible calls God's substitutes? It calls them idols. And the life centered on an idol is idolatry. And so therefore we have always in front of us, the true genuine faith in the living God or idolatry, that's what you have always in front of you. Now, I think the book of Hebrews lays out a better life than that, Amen. It's called the life of faith, and at the end of Hebrews 10 it's described for us very powerfully, and there it says, "my righteous one will live by faith." The life of faith.

Now, we live in a time of technological advances, we live in an era in which it seems like every 18 months to two years, some radical new invention usually in the electronic realm, or the software realm, comes and just transforms the way you live your life. And you can go to Best Buy and find out what all of those kinds of new technologies are. We live in that kind of world, we live in an advanced society. And we do not, as I've mentioned before, measure our wealth in terms of livestock or how many viable wells that you dug in the waste land from which you're drinking your water. That's not our wealth, we measure it in other ways. But this chapter stands in front of us with a staggering proposition, and that is that in every single generation of human history, people who have lived lives pleasing the God have done so the exact same way. It unifies all of human history, they have pleased God only by faith. And so we're going to reach back to the primordial, the beginning of biblical history, the beginning of redemptive history, and we're going to be looking this week and next week at three individuals who lived their lives before the flood. We're going to look at Abel and we're going to look at Enoch and Noah. And what we're going to find is that even in the world of that time they pleased God, they lived by faith. It's been the same and the author here is commending the exact same life to us. No difference in the end, no difference.

Maybe a world of difference in terms of the technology, frankly, we know very little about the world before the flood. 2 Peter 3:6 talks about how the waters of the flood deluged and destroyed, it says, the world that then was, or the world of that time. And that flood was devastating, it was earth-rending. The flood gates of the deep were burst open, as they're ripping and rending. It's a powerful thing. And so we actually have very little physical... None, really no physical evidence of what the world at that time was like. We have very little descriptions in the first five chapters of Genesis of what the world at that time, was. We really don't know much. Artists will try to draw it, some seeking to be really faithful to the biblical text will draw a world of amazing technology, and I saw one that had a mono-rail, I thought that was really cool. A pre-flood monorail. Others tend to go the other... Expect that they looked Neanderthals in animal skins, living in tents or caves. I have no idea what the world of that time was.

But one thing I do know, Abel, Enoch and Noah pleased God by faith. That much I know, and in that way, we are brothers with them. There's no difference. And so we are looking back to the beginning of history, and we are finding that these three individuals lived by faith, the same faith that Hebrews 10:38 commends to us. Now I'm going to go beyond that, I'm going to say in the language of Romans, and Galatians that those three individuals were justified by faith in Jesus Christ, apart from works of the law, that they stand righteous before God on the exact same basis that I do, because I have believed in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross I stand righteous in God's sight. I am justified by faith. We celebrated that this week with a reformation week. For me, as a church historian, I always love to think about the events of 1517 and Martin Luther and his nailing of the 95 theses to the door, the beginning of the Reformation.

But the center piece of that whole thing was a work of revival by the Spirit of God, whereby the Gospel of Jesus Christ was rediscovered and stripped of all of its medieval crustiness and got back to the pristine truth of justification by faith apart from works of the law. And so what I'm going to say is that Abel and Enoch and Noah were all justified by faith in Christ. And there's such clear indications of that in verse 7 about Noah. I'm not going to talk about Noah very much there or Enoch, but it says that he became heir of the righteousness that is by faith. That's justification language. That Noah stands on the same ground I do, the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

And as you go on through the catalog that you heard Rick read for us, Abraham was justified by faith in Christ. It says in Galatians 3:8-9, that the scripture foresaw that the Gentiles would be justified by faith, and so it preached the gospel to Abraham ahead of time. And so we become heirs with Abraham of the righteousness that is by faith, so therefore, Abraham was justified by faith in Jesus Christ. And Jesus himself said, "Your father Abraham, rejoiced to the thought of seeing my day, he saw it and was glad." And Moses was justified by faith in Christ because in verse 26 of the same chapter, it says that he considered the riches of Christ, greater than all the riches of Egypt. He was willing to suffer for Christ. It says Christ, right there in verse 26. And so Moses was trusting in Christ. Jesus himself said, "If you believe Moses, you would believe me for he wrote about me." So Moses wrote about Christ, and he believed in Christ.

And so, what I'm going to say is this unifies the entire human race of believers, we have trusted in Jesus Christ, in the finished work of Christ on the cross. And if you're an unbeliever, today, you woke up this morning and you were not in faith, you did not believe in Christ, but yet God brought you here today, I believe more than anything else I'm about to say, he brought you here to hear this. Your sins can be forgiven by simple faith in Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God, he took on a human body so that he could die. And he shed his blood on the cross for sinners like you and me, and all you need to do is look to him with eyes of faith, you will not see him with your physical eyes but you will look to him not having seen him, believing in him. All your sins will be forgiven. Don't leave this place unforgiven. Don't leave this place in sin.

Trust in Jesus and all your sins will be forgiven, and the scripture gives you indications. You'll be just like Abel in that regard, just like Enoch just like Noah, just like all of these. Same thing, justified by faith in Jesus Christ. So we're looking back to the beginning of time, biblical history. We're looking at Abel, we're looking Enoch, we're looking at Noah this week and next week, and in order to do that, I want to jump ahead to verse 6 and treat with it, first.

And so this verse has been much in my mind, verse 6, "Without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

Basically what he tells us there is the basic principle of a relationship with God. He gives us the basic goal, the basic goal here is pleasing God. Look at the verse, "Without faith it is impossible to please God," so it presents pleasing God as the central goal of life. We ought to please God, we have to live for pleasing God. And so the desire of my life as a Christian is, as it says in Ephesians 5:10 to find out what pleases the Lord. I want to find out what brings him pleasure, what pleases him. And so, I exist to please God, I was created for his pleasure. But I've also been instructed and I find that I must find my pleasure in what pleases him. That's the nature, the essence of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

It is true that Jesus is the King of rebellious kings, and the lord of reluctant lords that is true, but that's not the nature of his kingdom. We enter his kingdom joyfully by faith, glad to have Jesus as our king, delighted to serve him. And so, therefore, there's a mutual pleasure here. The purpose of my life then is to find my pleasure in pleasing God. That's why I exist. And so the verse gives us that indication.

The second statement of my basic reason for existence is that I would come to God. So I am to please God, it also says I am to come to God. Without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him... And I'm going to add the phrase at the very end, earnestly seeking him. So coming to him and earnestly seeking him, I consider the same thing. And it implies a kind of a distance between me and God. And a journey to be traveled. I'm here God is there and I need to come to him, I need to seek him. There's a distance between us and I want to come to him and to seek him. And so the purpose of my life is that, it's to come to God. And to find my pleasure and my delight in closeness to God.

That's why I'm here. It's the purpose of my life, it's why Jesus Christ came. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," said Jesus. "No one comes to the Father except through me." "I'm here to bring you to God" is what he is saying. 1 Peter 3:18 says that Jesus died on the cross to bring sinners like us to God. And so therefore, the psalmist celebrates this, Psalm 73 says, "As for me it is good to be near God." Isn't that true? Or the psalm, we read earlier, Psalm 27, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple." The psalmist David there, his delight is to be close to God, he wants to be close. Psalm 84 puts it in the pilgrimage language.

You remember how the Jews three times a year would have pilgrimages from wherever they lived to the central place of worship that God would choose, and they would travel songs of ascents. They would go up and they would travel up to Jerusalem. And Psalm 84 is a song of ascents, and as they're going up, they're celebrating pilgrimage. And the psalmist in Psalm 84:10 says, "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a door keeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tens of the wicked." I want to be near God, even the swallow has found a home, a place near your altar O Lord, God almighty. I just want to be close to God. And so there's that sense of a journey, a traveling and diligently and earnestly seeking him, I feel distant from him. I want to get close to God. That's why I live.

The third statement of the basic goal is that I might be rewarded by God. "Without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." And so I should be living for the reward. To be rewarded by God. And it's amazing, this verse tells me that in order to please God, I actually have to believe that he will reward me. He's displeased with people who don't care about the reward. We should be living every moment for the reward that God will give. And I want to talk about that today, I want to talk about what that reward is and what it means, but I'm just saying just right from the front, I should be living for whatever that reward is that he's going to give. So that's why I exist. I exist to please God and to find my pleasure in pleasing him. I exist to come to God and to earnestly seek God.

Double Negative Assertion

I exist to live a life that he will reward, that he will reward my life. That's why I exist. And what this verse is telling me is what is required for me to do that, what is required for me to please God, what is required for me to come to God, what is required for God to reward me, and he tells us it's faith. He puts it with a double negative kind of sense, "Without faith," that's negative, "it is impossible," that's negative. So the strong... Whenever there's a double negative, I think, in the scripture you should think about a strong, positive assertion. It is absolutely required that you have faith in order to please God, to come to him and be rewarded by him. And I think we ought to just meditate on this negative. Just think about it. It is a powerful thought. We live on a planet, we live in a world surrounded by billions and billions of people who do not believe in the God of the Bible. Who do not believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they do not believe in Jesus. We are surrounded by people who do not have faith and this verse tells me that nothing they do pleases God.

That's a radical thought. They could volunteer their time in a soup kitchen, they could set up a disaster relief tent where there was an earthquake or a hurricane, they can pour out every ounce of energy in their lives, but if they don't do it by faith in Christ, trusting in the blood of Christ to forgive them for their sins, God is not pleased with any of it. Another verse teaches this exact same concept, Romans 14:23. It says there, "Anything that does not come from faith is sin." It's not morally neutral even. It's not like they get no credit, it's that they're actually in a worse position now than they were 24 hours ago after spending their whole day serving the poor and needy, or housing those that are homeless now because of a hurricane. They are actually in a worse place than they were 24 hours ago. They have actually stored up more wrath because they have done yet more deeds with no faith. And if they have no faith, their deeds are not pleasing to God. It's powerful. It's overwhelming, it's grievous when you think about it.

It says in Romans 2, that they're actually storing up wrath against themselves for the day of God's wrath. And so without faith it's impossible. It also speaks to me in terms of my own life. Because I find that as I look at my life, I would not say that everything I do, I do by faith. Would you say everything... 100% of what you do you do by faith? I don't think that's true. I certainly don't sin by faith. And so, therefore, there's a portion of my life that's displeasing to God. He's not pleased with anything that I don't do by faith, right?

So I've been thinking a lot about this verse. I want as much of my life as possible to be pleasing to God, Amen. I want to live for his pleasure. I want to be pleasing. And therefore, you know what he's ushering, he's taking me by the shoulders and he's bringing me to faith and he's saying, 11:6, faith, faith is the issue. And from Romans 14:23, he's saying, you know what your problem is when you sin, you lack faith, faith is your problem. You sin out of unbelief every time. So therefore, for me, the best thing I can do as a man is to grow strong, wax strong in faith.

And the best thing I can do for you as a pastor is to help you do the same, to feed you the word so that your faith gets stronger and stronger. Those are the implications of this verse. Now let's apply it back to Abel, Enoch and Noah. Why does the author give us this in verse 6? Why does he interrupt his history that you heard Rick read, and it's going to be a long history. And he goes to Abel and Enoch, and he just stops himself after those two, and it's almost like, "Oh, by the way, just so you know, Without faith it's impossible to please God." Why does he do that? Well, he's just... I think he's working out logically. He wants us to be thinkers. So use your logic, use your reason. Reasoning is huge in the Christian life. I'm going to talk about that when Abraham reasoned by faith, that God could raise the dead, and that's why he obeyed. I'm going to talk about reason. We'll get to that. Alright, that was bad, see now, I've robbed the punchline of that sermon. We'll get to that, but there's a marriage between faith and reason, and we're supposed to be thinking things out. Well, let's try to understand it. What the author is saying is, he's saying, "Okay, Abel is an example of faith. By faith, Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain did."

But if you flip back and you go to Genesis account, faith isn't even mentioned, faith isn't mentioned. By faith, Enoch walked with God and God took him... Again, you go to the account of Enoch and there's very little about him, and the word faith isn't even mentioned. As a matter of fact, the first time faith or belief is mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis 15:6, "Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." That's the first mention of faith in the Bible. I think by the way, it's a very good first mention of faith. It's what's quoted so we can know by which we can be made righteous. But there's just no mention at all in the first 14 Chapters of Genesis of faith at all. So how is it that the author is getting away with Abel and Enoch and Noah as examples of faith? And what he does, he gives verse 6 to tell us how it works. So, fact number one, without faith it is impossible to please God. Fact number two, Abel's offering pleased God, therefore... Come on, give me the logic, he offered it by faith, okay? Fact number one, without faith it is impossible to please God. Fact number two, Enoch was commended as someone who pleased God. Draw the line, give me the conclusion, Enoch walked by faith. Amen.

He walked by faith. Same thing with Noah. And so, the bottom line, the author is giving us the reason why Abel and Enoch and Noah are examples of faith even though faith is never mentioned. Well, let's press a little deeper. How do we even know that fact one is true? How do you know that without faith it's impossible to please God? Well, here we can just, you know, with the Scripture you can say, "Because I'm the daddy, that's why. We just do that." Because I said so, that's why. The Bible makes all kinds of assertions, and we believe them or we don't, but as believers in Christ, we are also believers in the Bible, and we just accept it. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:6, "Without faith it's impossible to please God," and many other such verses tend toward that direction or teach a similar thing. And for me that's good enough. But I think the author himself wants us go a little deeper, because he supports the statement with the rest of the verse. "Without faith it's impossible to please God, for anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." So that's the support that he gives us for the assertion.

So as I meditated on this, I thought, it really just comes from the essential basic nature of God and his dealings with us as sinners. It just fundamentally comes down to God himself, what he is like and how he is dealing with us. And so, I'm going to draw out two attributes, the hidden-ness of God and the goodness of God, that's how we know that what verse 6 says is true. First, let's go with the hidden-ness of God. What do we mean by that? We serve an invisible God. God is invisible. Many Scriptures testify to that, he cannot be seen with the eye. And so, it says in 1 John 4:12, "No one has ever seen God," or John 1, same assertion. "No one has ever seen God at any time." John Chapter 1, or in 1 Timothy 6:16. Speaks of God who alone is immortal, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. Isaiah 45:15 says, "Truly you are a God who hides himself, oh God and Savior of Israel." That's a deep verse. God hides himself. And so therefore, you cannot come to God without faith, because faith is the assurance of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen, it deals with invisible things, and you will not be able to come to this invisible God unless you believe that he exists.

And you will not believe in the invisible God without faith. And so you must believe that he exists, the existence of God. No one takes a journey to a place that he personally doesn't believe exists. People may take journeys to places that don't exist, but they think that it does. They may be deluded and their friends would do well to talk them out of it, but if you had a friend that was going to sell everything and move to Shangri-La, I think it'd be good for you to talk them out of it. The place doesn't exist. And we are on a journey here, because of our sins we are separated from God and Jesus came to bring us to God, and so, we must go on a journey to find God. And we actually live every day that way, right? And so, we're going to seek God and we want to find him, but you have to believe that he exists. You won't take the journey if you don't, and therefore you can't please God. And furthermore, you won't take a journey if you don't believe you'll get something good out of it, right? Doesn't it make sense? Now, let's say you lived in 1849, you were a prosperous business man, a merchant in Philadelphia and you read the reports of the finding of gold in Northern California and your brother and two of your best friends sold everything they had, went and were gunned down in the gold field and lost everything.

And now you're toying with the idea of selling everything you have and going to the gold fields of Northern California. Are you going to go? Probably not. Why would you sell everything that you own to go on a perilous journey like that if you don't think it's going to be worth it? That it will be beneficial for you to go, and so you therefore must believe that you'll get something good out of making the journey. You must believe that seeking God will produce something worthwhile to you. It's going to be worth it to find God. Now, what's amazing is, bottom line, the Scripture tells us that no one naturally begins this journey. No one. Romans 3:11 says, "There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God," no one. You're not going to sell your possessions and buy that treasure in the field, unless you think it really exists and it's going to be worthwhile. And so, the first thing that God has to do to save a sinner is give them the gift of faith. He gives them faith, and then they say, "God exists, and he is infinitely worthwhile and I am going to pursue him the rest of my life." And that's how it all begins. And so, what is the reward, what is it you get for earnestly seeking God?

Well, look at the verse and the verse has its own answer. And without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to God must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek God. Okay, can you have any sense of what the reward might be? How about God, maybe God is his own reward. The God who created these beautiful majestic trees that we see around us, don't you love this time of year? Don't you love the vivid oranges and reds and yellows, the piercingly blue sky, don't you just love this time of year? Don't you want to know the God who made it? Isn't he better than what he's made? And so, we want him. And so, I believe that if you earnestly seek him, it's him you'll get, because that's what you want, it's what you wanted your whole life, and he will give himself to you. It says in Jeremiah 29:13, "You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart." That's what you get, you get me. Now, what I believe is that this reward comes both now and infinitely more in eternity. You get some today and you get even more in eternity, isn't that awesome? This is the life of faith. Every day it's like, "God, give me some reward today for seeking you. Show me yourself. I want to know you. I want to have a touch with the living God today. I want to be happy in Jesus today. Would you please touch me today with a sense of your presence?"

And he does, and so he gives a reward to those who earnestly seek him. He gives foretastes through the Spirit. And so we seek him. And we need to do that even as believers, because God is not immediately evident in front of us. Think about Saul of Tarsus. What happened with Saul of Tarsus? He's on the road to Damascus, he's traveling there, suddenly he has a blinding light from heaven and a voice, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you Lord?" "I am Jesus, the one you're persecuting." The blinding light of the glory of Jesus. But then, it went out. He didn't see it later that night. And you know what he did, he spent the rest of his life seeking it again, I want to know Christ, I want to know Christ, I want to know him, I want to know him. Forgetting what's lying behind, pressing toward what is ahead, I want Jesus, I want Jesus, day after day after day. I want to see where that light came from. I want to see it more clearly. I want to be in it forever. That's the nature of the Christian life. And sometimes he gives you spiritual light, it'll flash and it'll go out and then by faith you go to the next one. You're like, "I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I want it, I'm seeking you." That's the life that's commended for us here. This is the life worth living, living for God every single moment.

That is the reward. Oh God, Psalm 63. "Earnestly I seek you… in a dry and weary land where there is no water" like a starving, like a dying man who's got to have a drink of water, I must have God today. It's the life. And infinitely more later. For now, we see through a glass darkly, and then we see face-to-face. Now we know in part and then we shall know fully even as we have been fully known, infinitely better.

So that is the reward. But I believe the Bible also teaches rewards. I believe in rewards, not just reward. And what is that? Well, the Bible often speaks of this, and it has to do with good deeds that you do by faith for which you will receive something back from God. And that also dictates how you will live your life. "For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them," and that we would spend every single day walking in those good works that he has laid out for us to do. And the Bible tells us very plainly, if we do, he will reward us for each one, each one. That's awesome. Every good work you do by faith, he will reward you for it. So basically, my life then is broken into two categories, that which was done by faith and that which is not done by faith. Everything done by faith will receive a reward, everything not done by faith will be burned up on Judgment Day. Wood, hay and straw, gone. That's it. And so, therefore, whether I eat or drink or whatever I do, I want to live to the glory of God. I want to do his will, I want to please him, I want to discover Jesus in the center of it.

We talked on Wednesday night, about the eating of a ham sandwich. Some of you have to have more faith than others to eat a ham sandwich. Some of you love ham sandwich, doesn't take any faith to eat a ham sandwich. But I say to you that I've eaten a lot of ham sandwiches, and most of them probably not by faith, but some of them by faith. And so, I can eat a meal to the glory of God, or I can sit and argue with the people around the table and get fleshly and carnal and eat the same food, but not to the glory of God. Do you see what I'm saying? As soon as the meal is over, I can get up and serve in some way or walk in the good works God has, whatever they are and I can go store up treasure in heaven, or I cannot do that. This is two different ways to live. And that means every moment of every day has meaning for me to discover Jesus in the eating of a ham sandwich, to discover Jesus in a conversation with a brother or sister in Christ, to discover Jesus in intercessory prayer. And in this way, I am told I will be rewarded for anything done by faith. The staggering teaching of the Bible. In John Chapter 12, if we serve Jesus, He says, "My Father will honor the one who serves me." It just blows me away that God would honor me.

I know that I'm going to honor him, and well I should, and I will worship him. But that he would actually honor me for anything I do to serve him is staggering. And what is the nature of that honor? It is, I am pleased with you, I'm pleased with what you did. I'm going to tell you about that. I may even give you a physical artifact, sometimes spoken of as crowns, things like that. I will give you emblems of my pleasure in what you did. And as a matter of fact, this is such a huge issue that Jesus spent almost a whole chapter of the Sermon on the Mount talking about it, Matthew 6, it's all about rewards. Please, he says, don't do your rewards to get your... Your deeds to get your rewards now you'll lose them. So if you give to the needy and you announce it with trumpets and everybody sees what you're doing, I tell you the truth, you have already received your reward. But when you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret and if you do that, your Father who sees what is done in secret, he will reward you.

And when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, praying out so everybody can see you, but go into your room and close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen and your Father who sees what is done in secret, he will reward you. It's a whole life of living by faith, storing up as he says in Matthew 6:21, treasure in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy. And so, what is the center of that reward, of those rewards? It's commendation from God, like Enoch got. Enoch was commended as a man who pleased God, it's commendation that God would commend you. And then you will cast all your crowns at the feet of Jesus and know you didn't deserve any of them. Every one of your good works were done because God worked grace in you.

But just in the interest of time, I'm going to move Abel to next week. I don't think he's going to mind.  And if we can actually get Abel, Enoch and Noah done in one week that will be close to a miracle. But I think Hebrews 11:6 is worth living out, don't you? That we should live every moment of today discovering the hidden God, discovering the invisible Jesus in every encounter, that's a life worth living. And so, I would commend to you first and foremost that you come to Jesus and trust in him.

If you've never done that before, you know now, I've warned you, none of your good works will be pleasing to God if you don't first come to Christ. Trust in him. But secondly, I urge you, I would urge you... Read this verse every day for the next month, memorize it. And say, "God, I want to live a life pleasing you. I just want to know the truths of Hebrews 11:6. I want to live this out, I want to come to you, I want to please you, I want to diligently seek you." And then thirdly, just discover Jesus moment by moment in every encounter with another human being, every good work, every dish you wash, every moment you're in the car, saturated in prayer, thank God for the trials you're going through, go through this, and just sanctify every moment by faith, close with me in prayer.

As I come to the text today, there are two great issues that confront me from verses 2-3 of Hebrews 11 that I think confront people all over the world, every culture, every generation. All the time, these questions are among the great questions that face us as human beings. The title of the sermon in the order that we find in Hebrews 11:2 and 11:3 is Commendation and Creation. But kind of reversing them into a more logical order, the question that's in front of us is: "How did we all get here?" A question of origin. And, "What should I live my life for?" A question of significance or meaning.

These things stand over us every single day. Whether an atheist, Christians, Muslim, it doesn't matter, these are the questions that are common to the human condition. We yearn to understand origins, where it all came from, and we yearn to understand what is worthy of my attention in my life, what should I be living for, a sense of purpose or calling or something that is worthy of my attention. And I tell you, we live surrounded by people who are lost on these issues. They're lost. They're without hope and without God in the world, and they live depressing lives, empty lives, and they try to find meaning in created things and they can't really find any ultimate satisfaction in them.

And people who are skillful at capturing those thoughts, authors, playwrights, musicians, artists of various types, have been able to capture the feeling of emptiness that comes from considering the question of origin and the question of worth and coming up with nothing. I mean absolutely nothing. Like, for example, Jean-Paul Sartre in his book "Nausea," parenthetically, why would anyone want to read something called, Nausea? But I guess I read part of it anyway. And this is what he says: "I had always realized it; I hadn't any right to exist at all. I had appeared by chance. I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential buzzing. I was thinking that here we are eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence and that there's nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing."

Somerset Maugham wrote this: "If one puts aside the existence of God and the survival of life after death as doubtful, one has to make up one's mind as to the use of life. If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what am I here for, and how in these circumstances I must conduct myself? Now, the answer is plain but so unpalatable that most will not face it: There is no meaning in life, and thus life has no meaning."

Now, I can't live my life like that. And the joyful good news of the Gospel is I don't need to. The universe didn't pop up out of nothing and have no purpose or no meaning. The text today asserts that God created the universe by his word. It's what it says, and it tells me I'll know that only by faith. We'll get into all that. And that based on that faith, if I live in the faith that he alone can give, he will commend me, and that's worth living for. Well, that's it. You've got Hebrews 11:2-3. By faith, we understand a life worthy of commendation, a life worthy of living, and by faith we'll live it and be commended. Secondly, by faith, we understand the origins of the universe, that God created it so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible, and therefore there is a clear priority put on the invisible realm rather than the visible.

And that's what we have to look at today in our text. Now, what is the context here? Going back one verse, we had last week, Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." We talked about that last week, and we saw that faith has a beautiful, sweet, attractive, alluring side in which by faith, we are constantly buoyed up by hope, by assurance, a confidence of incredibly good things yet to come, and they are most certainly going to happen. But also, we are aware of the constant need for conviction of sin, and that the Lord by faith is going to keep us mindful of the truth of ourselves that we're mixed beings now. We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but we are also struggling with sin that lives in us. And so, by faith, we are convicted continually of specific ways that that sin acts up, and we repent of it, and with these two aspects of faith, we are conducted safely to heaven.

We need them both, got to have both. And the reason for this whole chapter, this faith chapter, Hebrews 11:1, I'm just going back one step to the end of Chapter 10, there it tells us, "The righteous or the just shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. But we are not among those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who believe and are saved." So, there at the very end of Chapter 10, he's describing the kind of life that leads to heaven, the kind of life that leads to not being destroyed, but rather, to being saved. There's a life that comes. It flows from faith.

That life leads to heaven, not to hell. And so, that's the context. We're looking at faith. We're trying to understand it. We're trying to understand what it brings to us, and in Verse 2 and 3, we have some additional elements.

Now, I want to begin in the order that it gives us, so I reverse them logically starting with creation and then going to commendation. We'll just take it in the order that the text gives it. And so, immediately in Verse 2, we have the issue of commendation. Commendation. We are taught in Verse 2, "For by it, by faith, the people of old [or the ancients] received their commendation." So we have in front of us this verse, and we try to understand it. Who were the people of old? Who were these ancients?

And what does commend mean? What does it mean to be commended? Who commended them, on what basis were they commended, and what is the significance of their commendation? These are the things that flow from the text for me. So, in Verse 2, let's start right away. Who are the ancients? What do we mean by this? By faith, the ancients were commended, people of old. The ESV translates it. Well, I think we have a sense from the rest of the chapter who he's meaning, who he's talking about. We go right from Verse 3 into Verse 4, and we find right away, we're talking about Abel. By faith, Abel offered a sacrifice, and then Enoch, we go to Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Sarah and all of these, Moses, all of these great men and women of old, these ancient people, the people who lived in centuries before, or what it says in Hebrews 1, our fathers.

"In the past, God spoke to our forefathers…" the ancients, the ancestors, the people before. Now, Christy and I were missionaries in Japan, and there is... I think there are, in their culture, an unhealthy worship of ancestors. It's part of Shintoism. It's part of the religion there. Christians don't worship ancestors, but we revere or esteem them and we can learn from them. And so, this chapter is filled with the examples of ancients, of people who lived before, and that's who they were. What does it mean that, by faith, they were commended? What is this commendation?

Well, the Greek word relates to a witness or a testimony given to them that they were testified about or positively. So, the word commend is a good translation, a sense in which someone says something positive about them, presents them as positive examples, praises them in some way. That's what the commendation is. And who is it that commended them and how did he do it? Clearly, this is God. There's no doubt about it that it is God who commends these ancient people. And how did he commend them? Well, first and foremost, for our purposes, he commended them in the pages of scripture. And so, Abel's offering was acceptable and his offering was spoken well of in scripture. We'll get to all that, God willing.

And the same thing with Enoch. As he walked with God, he's commended in the pages of scripture concerning his faith and what he did, and Noah's activities in building the ark, his faith and his obedience to God, is commended in the pages of scripture and on and on. All of these examples are spoken well of in the Bible by God. God testifies to them through the authors of scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit. But we have a sense that's just a little bit of a, that's just a tip of the iceberg, don't you? That, I mean, the scripture is a limited book. There's only so much that God could put in. There's a sense that anybody who has lived by faith, God will commend to that person, and that's, I think, why the verse is here, that this isn't just for the ancients and it's just for specifically those people whose stories are recorded in the Bible.

We know, like in 1 Chronicles and the Genealogy, there's a lot of people, we don't have anything of their stories at all. But if any of those lived by faith, the sense from this verse is that God commended them. And so, I have a sense of the heavenly council, you know, the angels and the elders and the four living creatures. And having God say something like he did concerning Job, "Have you considered my servant, Job?" To have God speak well of you, a commendation from God, to have God praise you, I want to talk more about this when we get to verse 6 because I think this is the reward part of it, but that God would praise your activities. He would praise your actions.

I think about what we learned on Wednesday night in the Gospel of John. We're studying there in John 12, and we find in verse 26 an astonishing statement that Jesus makes. You know, in verse 24 he says, "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." And then, he says, "If you love your life in this world, you lose it, but if you lose it, you'll save it." And then, he says, "Wherever I go, there my servant must be." And then, he says this: "My father will honor the one who serves me." That just still brings goosebumps to me. I mean, to think about the Father, the God and Father of Jesus Christ honoring a human being, speaking highly of them, praising that person, it's commendation, you should want it. You should yearn for that commendation.

I tell you, you should live for it. It should be the organizing principle of your life. I'll say more about that in due time, but I just think this is something worth living for. Don't you? That God would be pleased with you, that he would commend you, that your works would be satisfying to him? And that's the commendation that's listed here. And on what basis were these ancients commended? Well, it's not because of their courage, it's not because of their beauty and not because of their strength, their leadership, their winsome personalities, their financial skill or acuity or business acumen, it's not because of any of those attributes that might, we might even select.

Frankly, it's not even mentioned in reference to their love at this point. But on the basis of their faith, they were commended. Now, we need to understand this, that faith is not meritorious, it doesn't deserve anything, but I really look on faith as the conduit by which sinners like us can be praised by God only by faith. And so it says in Romans 14, "Anything that does not come from faith is sin." Conversely, the implication in this verse two is anything that does come by faith is praiseworthy, commendable. You have to have as many of those good works as you possibly can. Your life should be rich and full in good works, commendable actions, flowing from faith.

What Is the Significance of their Commendation?

And so, what is the significance of Verse 2 for me? Well, first the unity of God's work. What I would mean by that, I mean, in every generation, God's doing the same thing, every single generation, before the flood, after the flood, before Christ, since the time of Christ, in every generation, God always does the same thing. It's always on the basis of faith. And so, therefore, we see a unity also secondly of God's people. We are all the same in this regard even though we live in very different, a very different culture, a different time from those that dwelt in tents and where shepherds, or their wealth was in livestock. We were living in a different culture and yet we are one with them by faith. We are part of an incredible family of faith.

And so, across the generations back to the people of old, there's a unity in God's people. We are one through faith in Jesus Christ. And I'm going to develop this much more next week, God willing. But it's always been faith in Christ, always been faith in Christ, not merely faith in God, but it's faith in Christ that justifies. And so, I'm going to make the case that Abel offered his sacrifice in the name of Christ and that Enoch walked with Christ and that Noah built by faith in Christ, and I'm going to make it all based on one statement in Hebrews 11:26 when it says of Moses that he considered reproach for the sake of Christ as greater worth than the treasures of Egypt.

And so, it's a Christ focus that we have here. It unifies us. In every generation, God has always been doing the same thing. Abraham was justified by faith in Christ and so are we. And so, it's the same thing in every generation. And so, unity of God and his workings with people, the unity of the people of God, comes out of Verse 2 and therefore a unifying principle for your life. Live for the glory of God. Live to display the glory of God so that when he looks at your catalogue of your works, of your words, of your attitudes of your heart, that he may find his own glory there and may commend you. As it says in Romans 2:7, "But for those who by persistence in doing good, seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life." That's the kind of life that leads to heaven.

So that's what I get out of Verse 2. Now, for the next two hours, we're going to be looking at Verse 3. That's not true. That's one of those preachers so I shouldn't have said that. I would love to. As a matter of fact, Verse 3 has been jumbling around in my brain now for four weeks, and the jumbling actually increased over the last 72 hours, and then it reached kind of a fever pitch this morning. And so, you're all going to be blessed with my jumbled thoughts today. So I came from working on a sermon this morning. Carolyn asked me, she said, "So, how is the sermon?" I said, "Clear as mud." I think it's clearer now than that, I hope. A number of people have been praying for me because Paul urges that we pray for clarity and I want to pray because the themes that flow out of Verse 3 are... Oh, they just don't stop in my brain. I've been thinking about, for example, faith and science for decades.

I've been thinking about evolution, thinking about all these things. It just flows and flows and flows. It just never seem to stop. So for me, the answer is get back to the text, get back to what Verse 3 says. Stick to that first and foremost, and then go as far as time will, reasonable time will allow to talk about the implications of it. All right. So, what are we talking about in Verse 3? Well, you just look at it. By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible. That's what it says. So the topic has to do with the origin of the universe. That's what we're dealing with here. The Greek word "universe," translate universe and some of the translations, is eons. It has a sense of just levels of existence, generations, physical realms.

So we generally think of everything that was created, everything that was made, eons. So we're talking about... I think it's a good translation of the universe. And so, the origin of the universe is in front of us in Verse 3, and specifically, the assertions made positively, "By faith, we understand" the origin of the universe. We understand that the universe was formed at God's command, positively it says that, negatively so that what is seen is not made out of what was visible. So there's a positive assertion made and a negative assertion, and it gives us a sense of what we Christians should think of in terms of origins.

And so what does faith understand, based on this? So I'm going to give you eight things that flow from this. Five of them come right up off the words, three more come more generally from the book of Hebrews or maybe the New Testament in general, but I think you'll see it and what do we understand about creation by faith? Well, first thing that I learned from this is the universe is not ultimate it's not eternal. Neither is it independent. The universe was created it is not true based on this verse that the universe has always existed. It didn't. That's the first thing that faith teaches that the universe had a beginning, and a dependent one at that. I'm going to talk more about that in a minute.

But secondly, that God created the universe. Here, we're going to be different from the intelligent design folks who will never fly that flag because they want to discuss and debate in academia and get along and they want to get into the public schools, they want to do all that, that's fine, I don't have to do that here. Amen. I'm going to fly my flag. And by faith, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of Jesus Christ made the universe. That's what I believe and that's what faith tells me. By faith, we understand that God and it's in Hebrews, and so this is the God of the Bible, God made it.

Thirdly, that God created it with exactness and precision, everything in its proper place. And that comes from the Greek word translated fashioned or formed. It's a beautiful word hard to get across in English, but the idea is that the universe is beautifully finely made. When I consider the Heavens, the work of your fingers, you get a sense of precision and craftsmanship in the universe. I'm going to talk more about what I mean by that. But by faith, we are able to see the precision and the beauty in the order of the universe that God fashioned it or formed it.

Fourthly, that God created it by certain means and that is the means of His word. That God used his word to create the universe. He spoke and it came into being, "God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light." This is how Genesis I is recorded for us. "God said, 'Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." "God said, 'Let the waters be gathered to one place and let dry land appear' and it was so.'" God said, "Let the earth bring forth vegetation, seed-bearing plants" and it was so. God just speaks and speaks and speaks and so the word of his power is what just flowing from this, the word of God's power, it's by that means the physical universe exists. I'll talk more about the significance of that for our faith. But I'm just going through these phases now. This is what faith teaches me, it's by the word of God.

And fifthly, we learn from this, that the universe was created or God created the universe out of nothing. So there's a distinction made here between those things that are visible and those things that are invisible and I think ultimately by implication, the distinction between creator and created, there's just a huge gap between the two. And so it is very helpful for us to think of a time when God Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the triune God existed and nothing else existed at all. Nothing. And that is so refreshing and helpful to us, who get so wrapped up in the events of our lives and we forget there was a time that none of this stage on which this drama is unfolding this human history even existed. And I just think it's so helpful for me as a believer, to just kind of center in on God from time to time, and forget everything else. There was a time, there was only God and God created it all out of nothing. That is the central miracle of the Bible, and if you can believe that everything else is child's play, frankly. That God created the heavens and the Earth out of nothing to go from that to Jesus, the Son of God, walking on water, is not a big deal for me. For him raising Lazarus on the dead on the fourth day. That's not a problem for me. I see it his own resurrection. I'm not minimizing these great miracles, I'm just saying for God that created all out of nothing is the central great action on which everything else follows. Alright, let me add three more that don't come directly from the words of verse 3, but are in Hebrews, and I think connected to Verse 3, by implication.

Six, the universe in its present form is temporary. Okay, clearly, this is taught in Hebrews, it's not necessarily coming right from verse 3, but it's there. The universe in its present form is temporary, so in Hebrews 1, 10, and following, quoting a Psalm, it says "They will perish, but You remain. They will all wear out like a robe, like a garment, they will be changed, but you remain the same and your years will never end." Remember that's the Father speaking to the son.

And so, the universe is temporary, later in chapter 12, we're going to talk about those created things that can be shaken and removed. So the created things are temporary what is unseen is eternal and it's temporary, the universe in its present form is temporary. The next one won't be. Amen. The new Heavens and new Earth will not be temporary, but this one in its present form is. Is that helpful for you to know? I think so. I think so. We are going to be told in this chapter. We're aliens and strangers, passing through, and this adds a temporary universe. We are just passing through, like walking through the hall. Alright, we'll get to all that. But it's like walking through the hall, we are walking through the hall. I'll talk at that time about what we ought and ought not to do while walking through the hall, alright? But the point is, we're here temporarily and it's here temporarily. Seventh, the universe exists for God's glory. To put God on display. That's why it's here. By faith, we understand that. The best, maybe one of the best verses on this is Romans 11-36, "For from him and through him and to him are all things, to Him be glory forever and ever, amen." Is that not a healthy way to live your life?

For you to realize, I exist because he spoke me into existence. I'll exist as long as he wants me to exist in this present form and when He takes me back, I'm going back to him to give him an account, and may I live for His glory forever. It's just the best way to think about creation. ‘

And then finally, the universe was created by Christ, for Christ through Christ, it's a Christ-focused universe and we get this right at the very beginning of the book of Hebrews "in the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by His son whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe, the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word." That's Jesus. The universe, the heavens are telling the glory of Jesus. For me as a Christian, I see that. And so, Colossians 1 tells us that through Christ, all things were made visible and invisible, where the thrones, or powers, or rulers, or authorities, all things that were created by Him and for Him.

Now, if you take those eight things and you bring them to the halls of average academia, you're going to get laughed to scorn and I want to talk about why that is and what to do about it. But for us in the family of God, we take these eight things and we say, "This is true, this is what God's word says. I know it's true by faith, it's true and not only that, it shapes the whole way I live my life." Those eight things. Alright, now I want to dig a little deeper and try to get at a complexity here. This is where I hope it doesn't become clear as mud, but a complexity between faith and understanding between faith and what the mind does, what we call the rational process, the thinking process, ultimately science, we'll get to that. But just by faith, we understand that's what the verse says. How does that work? By faith I understand creation, how do I get at that? And the problem becomes deeper when you look at it. I think a parallel text in Romans Chapter 1, verses 20 through 22, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse," simply put Hebrews 11:3 "By faith, we understand," Romans 1:20, "by creation, we understand that God exists."

How do you put that together? It seems to be mutually exclusive it isn't, but harmonizing that, too, has taken up a lot of my mental time over the last few days. How do you put that together? And let me give you my best shot at it here, okay? This is the thing. Our five senses take in the physical world around us, and tell us things about that world. It starts the moment we enter the world, the moment we're born. And so learning by experience happens before learning by God's word, it just does chronologically. You first learn by experience and then you learn language, and then you learn the Word and then it comes in. That's the order naturally. Okay, so the first thing that happens is your five senses tell you, your sight, your sound, your taste, all of the five senses tells you about the world that's around you. About the sights, the colors, the sounds, the sensations, the taste, the aromas, the... The world is flooding and it's just amazing, isn't it? Marvelous to watch little ones grow and see their eyes just be filled with creation and kind of experience it again, through that. And this is the joy of parenting, one of the many. But just seeing them grow and develop, and then be able to bring scripture in and be able to teach them about God from that.

But here's the deal, I think, for all human beings, creation, the five sense world strews a bunch of information out on a table. Willy-nilly. Just, right there. And it's up to us to make some sense of it, to put it together in what's known as a world view, something that's going to harmonize all that and make sense. And only by faith can you do it well. If you don't have faith, you're going to take all of those raw ingredients and you're going to make a monster like Frankenstein's monster you're going to make a monstrosity a horror out of it. And we heard that at the beginning of the sermon. That's what you'll make of it, it's awful, but by faith, we can understand how to assemble it all and you know what's going to flow out of that healthy assemblage? Praise to God Almighty, you're going to worship Him, you're going to glorify Him, you're going to see the wonders of the universe you're going to see the incredible things that God's built in to the universe, we'll talk about some of those in a minute, but you're going to see it and it's going to make you praise God.

And then after that happens where you're still filled with that, please don't go to infidel.com and find out how they deconstruct all of your excitement about evidence, because it's so depressing. So depressing. See, but now, some of you are going to do it, infidel.com. That's like a... Yeah. What did he do with Lee Strobel's book? Well, we'll get to that in a minute. The fact is that evidence is there Bible tells us it is evidence that God exists. Psalm 19, we've already quoted, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge." So you go out and you look at the starry host, and it just is telling you of God. God is flowing in, and do you see that? Yes, if you have faith, yes. If not, it's just more raw material and you're going to make a monstrosity out of it. But by faith, we see that Psalm 104 is just the whole Psalm just celebrates the glories of God and physical creation and how he waters the upper hills and how He provides food for all of his creatures the rock badgers, the Coney and all that, and how God has an arrangement for the lions and how they go out at night and the men work during the day and they go out in the sea that ships and then the leviathan plays there, it's just this beautiful Psalm of all that God has made. Oh, how majestic and beautiful it all is.

And so, I looked at two books in particular, it helped me understand all of this, and the data, the evidence, the evidence for God, it's in the area of the realm of Christian study known as apologetics. So, I've often wondered what is the use of apologetics? Do people actually genuinely come to faith in Christ, when you give them Tim Keller's book, The Reason For God, or Lee Strobel's, The case for the creator, they do, God does that, but we know that faith ultimately comes by hearing God's Word doesn't it? By hearing the Gospel. So what do we do with evidence-based apologetics what would we do with the evidence of God and creation? What kind of evidence is there? Well, there's different categories of evidence. The first is just the existence of the universe itself. The question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" And there's just a lot of something, isn't there? There's just an awful lot of something. And so why, why is it there? Why is there something rather than nothing? And science has helped to some degree, in this regard, because astronomers have taught us that the universe is expanding and the further away it is the faster it's going.

Hubble saw that through the telescope. Einstein's theories help explain some of that. And so, basically, Stephen Hawking said there's almost no scientists today that doesn't believe in the origin of the universe, there was a time that many would just say the universe is all there ever has been or ever will be, and it's eternal. And so basically the universe... Well, I'll get to that in a minute, but there are views that the universe itself is eternal, but scientists don't even believe that anymore. They talk about the big bang, they just kind of rewind the film and they go back and they say, "Alright, there was this moment when everything in the universe was in this infinite thusly small space and nothing else." I mean, that was it. And then you go, I go, I always go, "Back before that and there's God." Okay? So it helps to ask the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" And look at origins. But secondly, Lee Strobel, and Tim Keller both talk about what's known as the finely tuned universe. What do we mean by the fine-tuned universe? Well, it has to do with physics and it has to do with physical constants that define physics.

Constants are just numbers that help physicists do their work and they're just coming from nature to the physicist mind and they just... And everybody agrees that's what it is. For example, there are 15 major ones, like the strong nuclear force and speed of light and universal gravitational constant. And various things like that. This is that clear as mud part. Okay, but let's take for example the universal gravitational constant, it has to do with two massive bodies and their attraction to each other. There's this big G, and the point is it is exactly what it needs to be for life to exist. That's the point. How accurate is it? Let me try to describe it. Alright, I... Never mind. So imagine the universe, this huge big universe, and I'm trying to give you a sense of the number how precise the number has to be. Imagine a... Well, it wouldn't be a yard stick, but a ruler. From one end of the universe to the other, that's how long this ruler is, 15 billion light years across and it's divided up into inches. [chuckle] Inches. Somewhere on there, is the number that is the universal gravitational constant. If you move it one inch to the left or the right, you can't have life. It's exactly where it has to be.

And that's not the only one that's just like that. So also the rate of expansion of the universe is the same thing. I mean, they use these outlandish examples to show how precise this whole thing is, so that nobody even doubts it. Everybody says "Alright, they take these 15 constants. They all have to be within a trillion trillion trillion part accurate and all of them are that accurate, and that's how you have life." Huh, I think there's probably a creator, amen. You know what some people are doing with that? I'll get to that, I won't do it yet, we'll get there. Or how about information in the DNA molecule? I'm not talking about the DNA molecule, I'm talking about the information. What do I mean by that? You remember a few years ago when Coca-Cola changed their recipe and they went to some new flavor, how long did that last? Is that like three weeks? I don't know, I mean it was just like, "Whoa, what is this?" And then it's like, "Okay, we're losing market share, huge, we're hemorrhaging it". So they went to Coke Classic and it's been back that way, ever since. Alright, well, there is some secret top-secret recipe for Coca-Cola alright? It's a recipe. Well, there's a recipe for everything.

There's a recipe for a butterfly's wing, there's a recipe for the eyeball there's a recipe for the fragrance of a rose. There's a recipe, and it's in the DNA molecule, and again if you re-arrange one step of that sequence in that, you don't get the rose's fragrance, you don't get the bird wing, you don't get that stuff.

It's got to be exactly that or you don't get all this complexity, that's information. Where did it come from? And it's ridiculous to say, "Well there are certain physical laws that make it... That make the molecule bind together," and I say, "Look, that has nothing to do with the information, information floats above the medium, doesn't it?" Let's take the newspaper for example, newspaper has ink on it, right? And there are physical laws by which the ink binds to the newspaper, but we don't read the newspaper for that. We try to find out what it's saying, like World War II is over the Germans have surrendered it's there's information that floats above the medium. And I don't really, I'm not really that interested in May of 1945, about how it is that ink adheres to the paper. I'm fascinated by the fact the war is over.

So, there's information. Where did it come from? Came from God, I think. Alright, now these are just some of the evidences. There are many many others. Believers love it, it causes me to worship, it causes me to praise God. Unbelievers shred it if they can or shrug it off. They try to find arguments. Like the first one, they just say, "Alright you believe in God, I just believe in the universe." I mean, you say God's mighty and big and wonderful and amazing and mysterious. I just say all that about the universe. You say that everything had to have a creator, well why didn't God have to have a creator? Whatever argument you give for God, I give it to the universe, that's what they do, it's the games they play. Or on the finally tuned universe, this is really funny. You know what they... Some of them are saying that there are actually infinite numbers of universes, going on and we happen to be in the one that allows life.

I love that one, that's one of my favorites. It's called the multiverse theory. There's zero scientific evidence for it, but imagine, let's, I just don't think we can live this way. I don't think we can live life like that way. I mean think about the old scene back in Wild West when there's a bunch of grungy gun fighter guys playing poker, and the dealer deals himself 20 consecutive four ACE hands 20 consecutive times, he got four aces all right. I don't think they make it to 20, but let's just, for the sake of my ridiculous illustration. All right, the 20th one, the other three are really upset with this guy, and they start to pull out their six shooters. All right. He said, "Now, wait a minute. Could it be that we're living in, just the one universe where actually I did honestly deal to myself 20 consecutive winning hands?" I think he's dead within four seconds. What do you think maybe two? We don't live life like that. It's not realistic and it sure isn't science. Science deals with what you can measure. What you can observe about theories about postulates and things you can test, you can't test multiverse.

Bottom line is there's an amazing, incredible creator and He's revealed to us in Jesus Christ, in the scripture. But here's the fundamental thing, this is what unbelievers will do, and it's what they'll keep on doing, and it's what they're going to continue doing. I mean we talked about it on Wednesday night with Lazarus, what happened with Lazarus? God... Jesus raised him from the dead, he is walking, evidence of the deity of Christ. Oh, the unbelievers all want to get to know him so they can become believers in Jesus right? No, they want to kill him, too. They want to kill the evidence and so that's what they try to do, they try to kill the evidence. Well, in my opinion, the number one evidence-killer there is, is atheistic evolution. It's the naturalistic explanation for everything.

We don't need a God of the gaps, a God to step into the place we don't understand. Give science enough time and we'll have a natural explanation for everything. And so, what Darwin gave to the unbelievers, of the world, a intellectually creditable kind of explanation of how random mutations and natural selection can explain everything we see around us which I find just amazing. I don't know how it can... I've often wondered and no one has a good answer to this. Where did the first living cell come from? You have a bunch of chemicals, bunch of chemicals, nothing's alive, nothing's alive. Then, first cell. And it has a cell wall, and it has DNA to pass on its recipe to its child, and it can eat and it can excrete and it can breathe and it can do all the stuff you have to do to have life, and it doesn't live long because the cells don't usually, but it just-in-time replicates and then dies. Okay, that's all very interesting.

And so, you go from the Big Bang to, galaxy clouds and they coalesce and you get a solar system exactly arranged like it needs to be for life with the earth, just the right distance from the sun and you've got water being a really weird substance that floats when it becomes a solid just amazing weird stuff about water. And out of all of this comes and then you suddenly have your first cell. Well we're a long way from a human being friends, an awfully long way, step by step by step. I wrote out the journey here, I can't remember it. I'll just read it for you. You go from non-living chemicals to amino acids from amino acids to proteins, from proteins to RNA, RNA to DNA, DNA to the single celled organism, that's the first living thing, single celled organisms to multi-celled organisms in which they are sharing functions, multi-celled organisms to invertebrate marine life, invertebrate marine life to vertebrate marine life, vertebrates to amphibious animals, amphibious animals to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, mammals to primates, primates to the human race.

Every single step, the jump is just incalculable in complexity, what I call the inverted house of cards in a wind storm. And the wind storm is whether it's law of entropy, second law thermodynamics, all the stuff, breaking stuff down all the time but it's getting more and more complex all the time. If you can believe that. Oh, how do I finish the sentence? But it's the only other alternative there is, evolution and creation are the two answers for how we got here. There isn't a third and so you gotta have this or you're going to have the other and they dread the other. And I want to ask... All right, if this has been going on for millions and billions of years where are all the fossils? I mean, this is a continual development, right? A continual development, instead the fossil shows snapshots of creatures, some of which still exist and some of which don't that appear in the fossil record fully formed.

I want to know where is 99% of a coelacanth or 90% of one? Where is the development? There aren't any, they just pop up there they are, it's creepy-looking old. You've seen him at the Museum of Natural Sciences. They look like hermit crabs, Right? But they've got articulated arms, they've got eyes, they've got all this... Where did all that come from? I can't make a coelacanth and neither can you. They're out of nowhere. Why doesn't the fossil record show this constant development? You know what I think? I think that evolution is a religion, I think it takes faith and as some humorous once put it, evolution is the assurance that fossils hope for and the conviction of transitional forms not seen.

And they keep waiting for it to come at some point, it's going to come. Darwin said the fossil record didn't show it, Charles Lyell, who came up with the column, the geological column, he said, "I don't believe in natural selection because the fossil record doesn't show it." Well in the next 150 years, we'll find them. Haven't found them and friends, we should be tripping over them, we shouldn't be able to be able to drive home because there's so many of them around. It's been billions of years after all. And thirdly, what Michael Behe has given us, irreducible complexity. I'll put it this way, in common language, what good is 28% of a wing? And it needs to be good or natural selection doesn't work, it's got to be an advantage to the species or it will get selected out and not only that, 29% has to be a little bit more of an advantage than 28% and 30% a little bit more. And then eventually you get a wing that actually works after 10 million years, doesn't make any sense, friends.

And yet in the halls of academia, whether at Duke, UNC at MIT, at different places we are brow beaten and we are intimidated and afraid to speak up because of the emperor's new clothes, you won't get societal recognition, you won't get research dollars because you won't sing from their piece of sheet music and you know what this guy in infidel.com did with all of the experts, with Lee Strobel, interviewed their PhDs, whatever, he would either say yes but they're not PhDs in the field they're discussing, or he would say in Michael Behe's case, yes, but it's not the majority view of the field. Dismiss, dismiss, dismiss.

All right, why is all this happening? Because God wills it. And let me tell you, this is very important, you need to understand what I'm saying here. God has not willed that it be logically inescapable that He exists, He has given the unbeliever a window to crawl out of if he wants to. He just wills to do it in that way. But what he has told us is in Romans I, it is morally inexcusable for them not to believe in God, they will have no excuse on judgment day, none. Not logically inescapable. But, morally inexcusable. And God wills it, that way specifically when it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 1, "For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God." Now, take the word wisdom out and put the word science in there. Okay. For since in the wisdom of God, the world through science did not know Him and can't know Him. And so what that verse is saying, is it was wise for God to make it impossible for science to find him, it was wise why? Because he didn't want us boasting in heaven about our intellectual process by which we reasoned out his existence instead he made us dependent on faith that he alone can give and if He doesn't give it to you, you will not believe these things. It's a gift of God.

"For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached, to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser. The man's wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." And so I am the sermon by preaching the cross of Jesus Christ. All Faith is not ultimately directed toward the universe and all that, it's directed toward the cross of Jesus and God sent his son into the world and He died on the cross. What looks foolish to man, but what is beautiful to the believer, Jew and Gentile alike. Jesus is God's righteousness, His wisdom, His power, and if you confess His name, if you believe that God sent Him that He died on the cross for your sins and that God raised Him up on the third day you will be saved. Live for that. Live for commending the God who did all of these things. It's worth a life worth living. Close with me in prayer.

There's some moments, as I read in the Bible, that I would really love to have been there when that happened. Many of them, as a matter of fact, but I think in particular about one morning in the accounts given to us in 2 Kings, in which an army, an Aramean army, has surrounded the city where the prophet Elisha is. And they're there because they think to take the man of God and bring him back to the King of Aram because he's so enraged that Elisha's warning the King of Israel concerning his every actions, and he's tired of it and he wants to capture this man, so he sends this huge army to go get one man. And of course the servant goes out in the morning and says, "In effect, we're in deep trouble, we're in deep danger. We're going to be taking a trip to Aram very soon." And Elisha goes out and looks and he says, "Don’t’ be afraid…Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." "What are you talking about? We are vastly out-numbered." "No, we're not." And then he prays this simple prayer. "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see."

Now, clearly, he wasn't talking about his physical eyesight. Apparently nothing wrong with that. But there is an eyesight of the soul, by which invisible spiritual realities can stream into our hearts. I believe that is called faith. And I think a supernatural thing happened on that particular account, he was able to see what ordinarily we cannot see, invisible beings, chariots, horses of fire, the army of the host of heaven, mighty army surrounding that little town. I wonder if God opened our eyes to see, in an amazing way into the invisible spiritual realm, this morning, what we would see. What it would be like to see the angels, what it would be like to see the demons, the spiritual battle that goes on all the time. But even better for us to see God on His throne as recorded for us in the book of Revelation, God seated on His throne, 24 elders around the throne, four living creatures, 100 million angels ready to serve God.

To have our eyes opened, to see this invisible spiritual realm, that is something that can only come by faith. And so as we come to Hebrews 11, we come to one of the most famous, one of the most beloved chapters in the Bible. Hebrews 11, frequently called, you heard Joshua say earlier; The Hall of Faith. The idea is somehow like the Hall of Fame, where you're just walking through a grand, glorious museum of men and women of God who have gone before us and who have lived lives of faith, who have done great things in this world because of their faith. The Hall of Faith. And it begins with one verse and one verse is going to be all we'll get to today. I'll say it's straight out, we're just doing one verse today, Hebrews 11:1.

It begins with, it seems, a definition of faith right at the start, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." So I want to begin by setting this statement, this incredible statement in its context. It's in the Book of Hebrews, as we've said, the Book of Hebrews was written as a warning epistle to some Jewish people who had made an outward profession of faith in Christ, and had in some way testified to it, probably through water baptism, but were under great pressure to renounce their profession of faith in Christ, and to turn back to Old Covenant Judaism, just out of fear. To turn their backs on Jesus Christ. And the author's been unfolding the glories of Jesus Christ, the superiority of Jesus Christ to everything that they have known in the Old Covenant. This priority of Christ as our great high priest offering a once-for-all sacrifice, His own blood shed for us, infinitely superior to that which cannot take away our sins, the blood of bulls and goats. Offered in an eternal place not built by human hands but that heavenly tabernacle which God set up. So, in Hebrews 10, he's giving them a series of exaltations, since we have these glorious benefits of the New Covenant. Since we have all of these glorious things, how are we to live, what kind of lives are we to live, and how are we specifically to persevere?

So as we begin in Hebrews 11:1, "Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for," the word "now" implies that we might want to look back at least just one verse to see the context. You know that the original epistle was not written with any of these kind of sub-divisions that we find helpful in our Bible reading, chapters and verses, but they weren't there, and so there's just a flow right through. And so it's reasonable to go at least back one verse, where we're going to actually go step-by-step back, back, back, to understand the context.

Warning Against Shrinking Back

But let's just start with verse 39. "We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." "The righteous will live by faith," we are told. In Habakkuk, "The righteous will live by faith, and we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe to the saving of their souls." That's what the author is telling us.

So we've got this incredible doctrine of the justification of a sinner by faith in Jesus Christ. This is the center piece of the gospel. We are justified by faith in Jesus, not by works, but simply by faith, that if you believe in Jesus, the incarnate Son of God who lived a sinless life, who did all these miracles, who walked on water and fed the 5000, who raised the dead, and opened the eyes of the blind, this Jesus, Son of God, Son of man, this one, this perfect, sinless one who died on the cross for our sins, whose blood was shed as a substitute, as a payment for our sins. He died on the cross and He was buried, and on the third day, He was raised to life. And if you put your faith in Him, if you trust in Him, you will be forgiven. You will be righteous in God's sight, simply by faith. And by that, you will receive the gift of the salvation of your souls. Simply by faith, justification by faith, that's how Chapter 10 ends. "We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who believe to the saving of the soul."

So let me just pause and just address you directly. If you don't hear anything else, if you have come here today, in a Christ-less state, you're outside the fellowship of Heaven at this present time, you've never trusted in Jesus, you were invited here perhaps by a friend, wandered in here off the street, or even if you've been here many times before, but you are in a Christ-less state, the Holy Spirit is convicting you of sin, He's showing you that you have never trusted in Him, the central thing that you can do, "This is the work of God," said Jesus, "that you believe in the one that he has sent." Trust in Christ and your sins will be forgiven. This is the gospel. Now, what we have seen in Hebrews is that it's not enough to just have a momentary trusting in Jesus, a sensation of feeling of trusting, but there must be an entire life of faith that has lived here. There is, in Hebrews 12, a race to be run all the way to the finish line and it's a race of faith. And so therefore, we must have our faith nourished and strengthened as I've been praying.

And so, in order that we may continue to believe to the saving of our souls, the author gives us Hebrews 11. So that you can keep believing in Jesus right through to the end, he gives you this array of godly men and women who have done it before you, who become for us, I think, beautifully the cloud of witnesses that he talks about in Chapter 12. Who stand around us to some degree and cheer us on in this race of faith, teaching us that we must endure right to the end. That's why Hebrews 11 is here, so that we can believe right to the salvation of our souls. Go a step back in Hebrews 10. Back in 10:36, we are told we must have endurance in order to inherit. You need endurance, you need perseverance, the author tells us that. You've got to keep going, it's not enough to start. He who stands firm to the end will be saved, and so we've got to continue. You must have endurance if you're going to inherit what has been promised. And so, I would say, in order to give us endurance, so that we may inherit what has been promised. He gives us this glorious Hall of Faith, Hebrews 11.

Go a step further back, we talked about, in Hebrews 10:34, about some people who joyfully accepted the plundering of their property, joyfully, because they themselves knew that they had a better and lasting possession. And how it wonderful it is to be freed from earthly concerns, freed from earthly materialism, freed from concern of what people think about you, just unleashed on the world because you know that you have a better possession and a lasting one. In order to help you know that, the author's given us Hebrews 11. He gives his people who lived for a city that is to come later, whose builder and maker is God, who didn't receive the things promised in this life but only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. These ones who admitted that they were aliens and strangers in the world, who lived their lives like that. He gives us Hebrews 11, so that we can be like that too.

Warning Against Apostasy

Finally, one step further back from that. Before that, there's a terrifying warning of apostasy. It's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. This is the warning that he's given us if we deliberately keep on sinning after we've received a knowledge of the truth. No sacrifice for sins remains, but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. This is what the author has in mind in verse 39, when he says, "We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe to the salvation of our souls," so that we will not fall into the hands of the living God as a judge, consuming fire but rather as a loving Father and Savior welcomed after our race of faith. That's why he's given us Hebrews 11.

Okay. So as we look at this, we see that in Hebrews 11, it's mostly made up of testimonials of individuals who have lived, we sang this beautiful song from the Gettys, "by faith, by faith, by faith." It's going to be this refrain in Hebrews 11, it's so incredible. Just a march of faith by faith, Abel did this. By faith, Enoch did that. By faith, Noah acted in a certain way. By faith, Abraham, by faith, Sarah. By faith, these individuals lived their lives.

The Power of Examples and Heroes

And so we have examples. And so the author is banking on the power of example. We are to have role models in this life of faith, both dead ones, and living ones, how's that? We should have dead role models and living role models. Abel is dead and yet he still speaks, right? He's a dead role model. We need both dead role models and living role models. Examples. We already saw this in Hebrew 6. There in verse 11 and 12, the author said, "We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised." You are to be an imitator of some people. You are supposed to imitate them. And so we already have the idea of role modeling back there in Chapter 6, we're going to get it at the end. The last chapter in Hebrews 13:7 there, it talks about living role models. "Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their lives and imitate their faith." So it's vital that we have men and women who are living the life of faith in front of us, and praise God for them.

Seriously, if you have found someone in your life who has been an example to you, a mentor, a role model, you should go to that man, you should go to that woman and say, "I see God's grace in you, and it has greatly encouraged me in my faith, thank you." We need that. Conversely, you get to a certain point in your Christian life where that's expected of you, and that you are called on to so openly, so conspicuously live your life of faith that others may follow your example. So we can say like the Apostle Paul, "Follow me as I follow Christ." Oh, we need that. I think the boldest statement on earth that you'll ever find is made by the Apostle Paul, I love this, in Philippians 4. Can you imagine even saying this to somebody, "Whatever you've learned, or received, or heard from me, or seen in me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you." Can you imagine even saying that to someone? Just imitate my doctrine, imitate my life and everything will go well with you, God will be with you. But here's the thing, don't we need that? Haven't you already received the benefit of that?

And so we have these role models. He who walks with the wise grows wise, dear friends, but a companion of fools suffers harm. And so God has given us some wise men and women, both dead and living, that we can walk with by faith, and we can learn from their example. That's what Hebrews 11 is all about. And so we're going to have examples, we're going to find out that these examples extended before the flood. They certainly, all of them, extended before the time of Christ. We're going to find a tremendous unity across the covenants, Old Covenant, New Covenant, to this one thing, the life of faith. It's always been the same, these individuals were justified by faith. We're going to walk through it together and learn.

Alright. That's a overview of Hebrews 11. Let's zero in on this one verse, it's going to take all our time. Let's try to understand what the author's saying, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Now, this is a very difficult verse to translate. You can tell that by looking at the major English translations and how different they are from one another, many of them. Let's take the most famous translation, the King James Version. King James Version gives us this. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The ESV, which you had read earlier, the NAS, and the RSV gives us, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Those three all agree on the translation. The NIV gives us, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see."

Okay. The key words to understand this verse, come down to the ones that the KJV translates, substance and evidence. That's where the difficulty lies. That's where they don't agree. All the translations say, in effect, "Now faith is the blank of things hoped for and the blank of things not seen." They all say about that, but we want to know what it is in connection with those things. So right away, all the verses tell us that faith has something to do with the invisible world, things not seen. Faith has to do with invisible things. We walk by faith, not by sight. "Because you have seen Me," Jesus said to Thomas, "You believe. Blessed are they who have not seen and yet they believe." 1 Peter, "Though we have not seen Jesus, we love Him." It's about invisible things. Faith has to do with invisible things. But how do we understand these two Greek words that are difficult, apparently difficult to translate because their translations are so different one from another.

How Faith is the Assurance of Things Hoped For

Well, first of all, the first half of the verse says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for." Okay. So we know that faith has to do with things you hope for. What does that mean, things that you hope for? Well, I think you only hope for good things and you only hope for future things. Does that make sense? Second half's easy because the Bible says it straight out, in Romans 8:24, we are told, "Who hopes for what He already has." Right? You don't need to hope for what you already have. And so hope has to do with things you don't yet have. So we are hoping for things that aren't ours, yet, we're waiting on them, we haven't received them yet. Faith is for future things. And just by logic, by language, we know we only use the word hope for positive things, good things, right?

You might dread something, you might be in anguish about something or fear it, but we don't hope for things we don't want to happen. We just don't use that language. Now, the word hope is a bit slippery in terms of our popular culture. We frequently will pit hopes against expectations, right? Like this one expression, "Hoping for the best, expecting the worst." The plight of a Red Sox fan, okay? "Hoping for the best, expecting the worst." We are back there again after some good years, back to that. And what does it mean? It means that in the calm and everyday world, frequently, a hope is something you want but it's actually a pale reflection of the biblical thing. You actually think probably it won't happen if you are a pessimist anyway. Look, that's not what we're talking about here, that is not biblical hope.

What is Biblical Hope?

What biblical hope is, is an expectation based on a promise that God has given, that he will most certainly keep that promise for that good thing. It's completely based on the promises of God. I'm going to look back at 10:23, Hebrews 10: 23. It says, "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." Do you see that? That's a key verse in understanding biblical hope. It's based on the promise. And even more than that, it's based on the character of the one who promised. Does that make sense? He who promised is faithful, or he who promise cannot lie. He who promised will keep this promise, and therefore, it is absolutely certain. It just hasn't happened yet. It's going to come. So that's what we're talking about, things hoped for. So what are those things hoped for? They're good things in the future.

In Amazing Grace, John Newton put it in this way in one of the less familiar stanzas. "The Lord has promised good to me. His word, my hope secures." That's perfect. He's made a promise of something good in the future and because it's in His Word, I get hope out of it, and it secures my hope. That's it. That's spot on. And so, because God's made you some promises of good things in the future, hope springs up, wells up inside the heart. That's what we're looking at. What future good things has he promised? Well, how many are our blessings? Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, all the good things that are coming. There's a long list. You just go through the book of Hebrews, one after the other, and you see all of those things that the author to Hebrews is telling you. Just focus on Hebrews, and go through it. I did this through 12 chapters of Hebrews one after the other, just seeing all the good things that God's promised us.

For example, in Hebrews 2:5, it speaks about the world that is to come, about which we are speaking. There's a world that's coming. It says in Hebrews 10, it talks about personal glory and bringing many sons to glory. We are being brought to glory, so we will be glorious in that beautiful world. We will be free from death. Hebrews 2:15, that Jesus frees those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Jesus has liberated us from death, and from fear of death.

We have a heavenly calling, a promise toward a heavenly calling, that He is going to say, in some way, "Come up here." He's going to invite us to heaven and we will come and we will be there with Him. We have an eternal Sabbath rest, where we will finally be done with all of our labors and toils. We'll be done at last. There remains, therefore, a Sabbath rest for the people of God because anyone who enters God's rest, also rests from his own works, just as God gets from His. We're going to lay it all down, friends, all the strife and conflict, and weariness and labor and toil. We will be done.

It's a good thing that's yet to come in the future. Eternal salvation, the resurrection of the body. It talks about that in Hebrews 6:2. The powers of the coming age, there's a powerful coming age coming. What a mysterious phrase that is, but how glorious to consider. Rewards for helping God's people, God is not unjust. He's not going to forget your labors in your work, as you help God's people. He's going to reward you. Good things yet to come. Guaranteed salvation right to the end.

Jesus is able to save to the utter most, He is able to save to the end, those who put their trust in Him. That's a future thing that you haven't received yet, right? Your final salvation. It's in the future, but you have hopes in that, don't you? It's going to happen. Future salvation. It's going to keep on coming. God is going to keep you saved until at last, you will see Him face-to-face. Transformed hearts resulting in a whole different way of thinking. We have foretaste of this, but someday, our minds will be totally conformed to Jesus. Our heart, totally conformed to Jesus. We will love perfectly what He loves, and hate what He hates. We're looking forward to that. It's a future. We're going to be conformed to Him, perfect in every way.

The full knowledge of God, God will be with us and He will be our God and we will be His people, Hebrews 8:10. And we will know Him intimately from the least of us to the greatest. All of our sins forgiven on Judgment Day, not guilty, not guilty on Judgment Day. Judgment Day hasn't come yet. It's in the future. Are you going to be acquitted on Judgment Day? If you're a Christian, the answer is a resounding "Absolutely, yes." You will be acquitted on Judgment Day. It's a good thing and you have your hopes in that, don't you? That you will not be condemned, but acquitted on that day.

And you will come into an eternal inheritance. How about the second coming of Christ? That Jesus, Hebrews 9:28, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him. We're waiting for the second coming. Is Jesus coming back? Do we have hopes in that? I do. He promised, He's coming back. And so I have hopes in the second coming of Christ, and perfect holiness at that point. Perfection in every way, and the heavenly Jerusalem, the unshakable kingdom, it's coming. He talked about that in chapter 12. You come to Mount Zion to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. Thousands upon thousands of angels and joyful assembly. You've come to the church of the first born whose names are written in heaven, and you've come to God.

What is the "Substance"?

That's all in the future. It's all in the future. Seeing all of that, experiencing all that, we get foretaste now through the Spirit, through the Word, but we get the reality later. And our hope wells up. Okay. So those are the things hoped for. Faith is the hupostasis of that. Okay. Does that help you? It doesn't help me. That's a Greek word. It's the hupostasis of that, or the substance of it, to the KJV. You know what they did? They bailed. Hey, I mean, all respect to the KJV translation. You know what they did? They took the Latin literalistic translation of hupostasis, which is substantia, and they just put substance over, and I don't... When I think of substances, I think of substance abuse or something like that, or a foreign substance in a ball, baseball, like Vaseline, that makes it do weird things. It's illegal, it's spit ball. Substance. What does that mean? The substance of things hoped for. Well, the word hupostasis is really... That's what the commentators debate on. And you can either look at it in terms of a subjective interpretation or an objective.

Faith is either looked at here in this verse by what it does to me or what it is, in and of itself. Does that make sense? So what it does to me is it gives me assurance. And this is how it works. By faith, those words, those ethereal things, that we cannot touch or see or handle now by five senses, become as real to me as the five sense world I live in. Does that makes sense? And so, right now, you're used to living by your eyesight, most of you. And you're living by what you can see, and so your sight tells you that you are at church now. I hope that's what it's telling you. You're at 414 Cleveland Street. You're looking forward, looking at me. My right arm is waving. Do you see it? Okay. And you have a sense of certainty about that. There's no doubt about that, okay?

The light is flowing into your eyes, and Jesus said, if your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. So by your eyesight, reality is flooding into your soul. Right? And so your eyes are good, and you're able to be filled with the light of this world and see the reality of it. I believe faith is the eyesight of the soul, by which, invisible spiritual things floods as vigorously into your soul as light into your mind, and tells you it is all true. It's real. It's as real as anything you can see with your eyes. And you just you have no doubt about it. Therefore, they translated assurance. You see, it brings about an assurance, a sense of the absolute certainty of invisible things, of things that you're hoping for. Does that makes sense?

Now, the objective translation, I have a hard time understanding, by which faith is the actual substance of it. It's kind of like faith is the pillar that stands under the thing hoped for, like a foundation of a building, something real and tangible, and faith is that. But the more I talk, after a while, it starts to float away from me and I end up with assurance anyway. And so, I think that's the best way to understand hupostasis, that basically, because of faith, by faith, the promises of God become substantially real to us. Does that makes sense? That's the best I can do with that.

The Beauty of Faith

And so, faith has a sweet attractive beautiful winsome positive side. It causes you to be constantly filled with hope, that your best things are yet to come, even when you get a dreaded cancer diagnosis, and you're told you have two to four months to live. Even when something like that can happen, still, you're filled with hope, and you can go through that right to the end and die filled with hope because of faith. And it's beautiful, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful way to live, and you need it. And so do I. And without it, we cannot serve Christ well in this world. You'll be a grim, negative, depressed, beaten down person without faith. Miserable, frankly.

But, by faith, instead, you are constantly saying, "God's promises are real. God is on His throne. God, who cannot lie, made those promises to me. God's purposes cannot be thwarted. We are going to a glorious world, infinitely better than anything I can see here. And nothing I go through in this world even remotely compares with the glory that will be revealed at that time. Praise God, thank you, thank you, thank you. And you just live your life like that. And you're going to be the best witness you could be for Jesus, if you live your life like that. People are going to ask to give you a reason for what the hope that's in you. I've just, I've never seen anyone live so filled with hope.

Why are you like this? Why are you able to just radiate hope all the time? It's by faith. So, faith has a sweet attractive, positive side.

I would contend from the second half of the verse, it also has a maybe hard, difficult, painful side as well. This is what I'm arguing that the second half of the verse means. Not only is faith the assurance of things hoped for, but it's also the conviction of things not seen. Now, here we get to the second difficult word. What do we mean by conviction? The word is a elegkos. It's only used here in the entire Bible. And whenever you have a word that's only used one time in the Bible, you have problems. You're going to have difficulties.

Now, there are a couple of things that you can do. You can go to how the word is used, how scholars tell us the word was used back then in other writings that aren't the Bible. And you can go to, are there any, let's say, verbal parallels. This is a noun here. Are there any verbs that are related to it etymologically? And you do that. Both of those things tell me the same thing. Alright? There is a Greek lexicon. I'm not going to burden you with what it is, but basically, it goes through Herodotus, Thucydides, etcetera. And what that Greek lexicon tells us is that elegkos means a cross-examining or a testing for the purpose of disproof or refutation, as in a court room or a trial of law, or you could use it the evidence by which a prisoner is convicted of the crime. Now, this is where I think the KJV translators got their evidence idea. It's evidence laid out in front of a judge or jury so that the accused can be convicted of what they did and sentenced. But what ended up happening is, just in the flow of English translations, it ended up being a lot like the NIV. It's, His faith is being sure of what you'll hope for and certain of what you do not see. And it ends up saying the same thing twice. I don't think that's what elegkos means.

Now, let's go over to the verbal uses. This word actually is used 18 times in the New Testament, so it's not one or two times. We actually have a lot of them and every single time it's used, it's used in the same way, reproof or rebuke for sin, every time. Not once or twice, not 15 out of 18, every single time. Let me give you some examples. If your brother sins against you, just between the two of you, go re-prove him for his sin. What are you doing? What's happening in that encounter? You are laying out what happened, just probably verbally, but you're saying, "This is what happened, that... "

And then, your goal in the evidence is to bring your brother to what? Repentance. The goal is repentance, it's not punishment, it's not beating somebody. Your goal here is conviction for the purpose of repentance. Does that make sense? And that's what this is. Okay. Other examples of the word. It's used many, many times. Speaking of John the Baptist, he reproved Herod for marrying his brother Philip's wife. Same Greek word. He said it's wrong. What you did was wrong, it's against the law. Or in John 3:20. "Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." Okay, there it is. It's an exposure of evil. And people don't want that to happen so they shrink back from the light. Or Jesus Himself, standing in front of His enemies, John 8:46, saying, "Which of you can reprieve or prove me guilty of sin?" What a bold statement. He's saying there is no evidence that I have ever sinned, ever. Imagine saying that your enemies. Or John 16:8, very familiarly. "When the Holy Spirit comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment to come." It's the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. What does he do? He comes and shows you your fault.

Just in the very next chapter, in Hebrews 12. You can look there if you want, just flip over. In Hebrews 12, in Verse 5, talking about us as sinning children of God. When we sin, it says you've forgotten that word of encouragement and addresses you as sons. "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he... " And here's the same Greek word, "rebukes you." Alright, so that's what the word, I think, means. Faith is the rebuke of things not seen, or the conviction, I guess is a good translation.

Basically, in effect, you know what faith does? Faith does what Nathan, the prophet did, when he stood in front of David, who was in denial about what he did with Bathsheba, and tells him a story. David's anger is kindled. You know the story, you know the whole thing. And then, he says, "The man who this deserves to die." And the Nathan points the finger and says, "You are the man." That's what faith does. Faith says you are not excused from this. Even day-by-day, moment by moment, the Holy Spirit comes and says, you just slandered somebody. You just shaded the truth. You just lusted after someone. You have sinned. Faith comes and gets in our business, gets in our face, points the finger and says, "You are the man. You have sinned."

You know what faith does? Faith brings us to that point that Isaiah was when he saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. And He heard that the seraphim crying out, Holy holy holy is the Lord Almighty, and He said, "Woe is me, I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." When I read that by faith, I'm convicted that I'm a sinner. See, I'm a sinner. And you say, "Wait a minute, we're justified. We're forgiven. Right?" That's true, it's true. Does that mean you're done being convicted? Are you done with that now? No. You know why? Because you still have Romans 7:17, a hideous thing, sin living in me. It's still there. It's still dangerous, you're in danger while you live. Someday you won't be in danger anymore. You won't need faith anymore. You will not need to be convicted in heaven. Amen, hallelujah. But while you live, you are in danger, and you must have this convicting work go on constantly. It's necessary. It's got to happen. You've got to have the Holy Spirit working in you constantly, a way of making you aware of your sins.

And so therefore, as I put Hebrews 11:1 together, I see the sweet, attractive, beautiful, positive side, assurance of things hoped for, plus the harder, more difficult, not favorite topic, other side of constantly convicted for sin, together as what's needed to get me through this world into heaven. Does that makes sense? I need both of them together to get me fruitfully, productively, in a way that glorifies God through, until I don't need faith anymore.

Need them both. Now, what is the thing not seen? "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Well, in order to understand that, I would go up a couple verses to Hebrews 11:7. So look at Hebrews 11:7, and there you have this interesting expression. "By faith, Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear, built an ark to save his family." So, that's Noah. We'll preach about that in due time, but you're just grabbing the phrase, "things not yet seen." You see, it's the same idea. Not the exact same Greek word, but the same concept.

Okay. What was Noah's thing not seen? Well, why did Noah build the ark? The flood's coming. He was warned by the Word of God that a flood was coming. He, in holy fear, took that warning seriously, and said, "If I don't build this ark, I am a rebel no different than any of these other sinners and I will deserve to perish with them. I must build the ark." By faith, he built the ark. Does that make sense? And so there is something coming, something bigger than a flood. Do you understand what's coming? It's called Judgment Day. And that could be a thing not seen, an invisible day that's coming, all the more as you see the day approaching, right? All the more as you see the day approaching. The day is coming. What's coming?

A day in which we will give God an account for every careless word we have spoken, a day is coming, in which, all of the nations are going to be gathered before Jesus and He's going to separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. A day is coming in which we are going to have to give to Jesus an account for the things done in the body, whether good or bad. Greatly underestimated verse in the Christian life. And I, as the apostle Paul put it on his trial in Acts 24, before Felix, he said, "I have the same hope in God as these men [the prophets], that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. So I always strive to keep my conscience clear before God and man." He lived in holy fear.

Is that appropriate for someone who believed in justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law? Do you think Paul believed in justification by faith alone, apart from works of what? He wrote Romans. He believed in it. But he strove always to keep his conscience clear before God and man. Why? Because a thing not seen is coming, Judgment Day. Tell him hold on, I'm almost done.

So what things not seen could there be? Anything that will serve to convict you of sin? It could be past things not seen. I am convicted by reading the account of David and Bathsheba. I'm convicted by it, because I know I have lust in my heart. And I don't want that lust to destroy my world the way it somewhat destroyed David's. I don't want that, so I fear, and I take steps to be holy.

I read about the warnings to the church, the Corinthian church, based on what happened in Israel, how their bodies are scattered in the desert. I take those warnings seriously. Anything that does it, in the past, past history, history of Israel's sins, David, Bathsheba, or something positive. Let's look at Daniel. Look at the way he lived, the way he was courageous, the way he stood by faith, three times a day, he prayed. Good solid walk with Jesus. I'm convicted by that if I'm not measuring up. Makes me want to do better. So it's not just negative, it's positive. I just want to be like Daniel. Does that make sense? So anything in the past.

How about present or the things not seen in the present that can convict you of sin? Well, we're going to get to that great cloud of witnesses. People get weirded out by that, like we're being watched all the time? People watching us? Yes. I have a little bit different take on the cloud of witnesses. We'll talk about that, but yes, you're being observed. The angels are watching you. They're living to serve you. They're there, but you know none of them matter anywhere near as much as the one who has holy eyes, eyes like blazing fire and feet like burnished bronze. Jesus is watching you right now, all the time. And you live your life before one who is unseen, Almighty God, the Holy One is watching you.

And that convicts you, doesn't it? It gets you serious about sin. It gets you serious, it's a present, thing present. So, things passed. It could be a thing not seen. Things present could be a thing not seen. Things future, like Judgment Day, thing not seen, but all of those things can produce or work in conviction of sin. And so, therefore, you as a godly man or woman, should expect to be regularly, consistently convicted of sin. You should expect it.

Now, if you are the one that God's going to use to bring that, be sure you go like Jesus said, gently like you're taking something out of someone's eye. And be sure you take the plank out of your first. You go gently. We're told in Galatians 6:1 that if you go to be a convicting agent, be sure you go gently, and be sure you go humbly, because you also have sin and you might get drawn up in it too. So that needs to happen, but it needs to happen very, very gently. In terms of the titration, mix 100 to one encouragement to that kind of conviction. That's about what I think we need, because we know we're rife with sin, and we just need that. It's not 50-50 or 70-30 friends. If you have to go take something out of someone's eye, do it, but do it gently.

But all I'm saying is on the other side, how do you receive it? Can you humble yourself? Can you say, "I'm sorry." Can you look for the words in the words of what the person's saying, and say, "Yeah, I did that wrong. I can do better. I want to do better. Please forgive me." Are you ready to be convicted? Alright. So, faith is both a sweet positive river of encouragement, a hope of all of those good things that God's going to give you, plus a consistent conviction of reality of how it's really going for you in your sanctification life, the sin that you're struggling with. Those two, together, will bring you to heaven. So what should you do? Feed your faith. Does that make sense? Feed it.

Read the Word of God, listen to good preaching, be around godly people who will speak God's word into your heart and your life. Pray this for each other. Pray for people's faith. I think we need to go through the phonebook, I hope you're still praying through the phonebook, but go through those names and just pray faith, pray faith, pray faith for people. "God, I pray that they would have the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen." I pray this for so and so, I pray this for so and so, I pray this for so and so. Just run through the whole book over the next month, and pray faith for people, that God would be building faith. Do that. And when you are... We tend to have a...

We tend to lean too much. Don't want to be optimistic or pessimistic here. Have a balance in these areas. Just know that you need both. You may have a tendency one direction or the other, but just need both. And know that Faith is temporary. Isn't that incredible? It's temporary. There'll come a day you don't need it anymore, when at last, you see Him face-to-face. Yearn for that day. Close with me in prayer.

The American Revolution was all but lost. Powerful British force had crushed the American colonial force at New York City and put them to flight that summer. The British and their Hessian allies had then occupied free colonies, effectively cutting the rebels in two, they had advanced within side of Philadelphia, the rebel capital by their perspective. George Washington had lost 90% of his army, and had been driven... What was left of his army, driven across the Delaware River. Many soldiers had been lost to death, to disease, to injury, and to capture. Many more had deserted. And as the year 1776 came to a close, Washington stood to lose even more soldiers legally at the end of that year, December 31st, when their terminate enlistment would end, and they could just walk away. The morale of his army was in an all-time low. But on Christmas night of 1776, as the howling Nor'easter struck the region, George Washington crossed the Delaware River and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison in Trenton, killing or capturing over 1000 men. The Second Battle of Trenton followed within a few days, as the rejuvenated Americans held off a counter attack by some of Lord Cornwallis' best troops.

Almost trapped at that point, Washington slipped away under cover of darkness, stole behind the enemy and hit them a third time at Princeton and won another victory over British Brigade at Princeton. The course of the entire war was changed with those events. More than anything, General Washington had given his army what it could not fight without, and that is confidence in final victory. Without that confidence, an army will quickly surrender in the face of the foe. But with confidence, an army will overcome even appalling odds and when shocking victories of it, genuinely believes it can win, no matter what the odds. Well, if confidence was important for General Washington's Army, how much more for the army of Jesus Christ in this world? We are faced with at foe so powerful that if we could see all of his power unleashed against us, we would quickly surrender. As Martin Luther put it, "Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing, we would quickly give up." We must have absolute confidence, unshakable confidence in our final victory in order to fight well. And without that confidence, we will easily, we will quickly crumble in the face of the battle that faces us.

And now, the author of the Book of Hebrews is giving the readers these Hebrew Christians the confidence that they will need to fight their fight or another image would be to run their race to conclusion. So we're talking about the issue of confidence. Look at Verse 35, there he says, "So do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded." It's a negative command. Do not throw it away this confidence. So what do we mean by confidence? Well, confidence is spoken of as a hard attitude or a hard disposition, a sense of internal security or certainty based on the faithfulness of God and the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Absolute confidence that comes from the fact that Jesus Christ cannot fail, that He came from Heaven, He took on a human body, He lived a sinless life, and He died on the cross for sinners like you and me. It's a trustworthy saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Paul says, "Of whom I am the worst, even the worst sinner, and Jesus Christ came to save sinners like you and me." And is it even possible that he could fail the omnipotent God incarnate? Is it possible that he could fail? It is impossible. For he said Himself, "I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of Him who sent me and this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me. But I will raise them up at the last day, for my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Sun and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." This unshakable confidence that God is pleased with us in Jesus, that God will welcome us into His presence. We feel it first and foremost in that vertical relationship that we have with God, the freedom that we have with God, to come right into His presence and receive blessing from him. We saw it earlier in Hebrews 4:16, "Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with confidence," because we have a great high priest who died on the cross, who shed His blood for sinners like you and me, since He was raised from the dead, since He has ascended and is now seated at the right hand of Almighty God, "let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Let's have that confidence.

So first and foremost, we have a vertical confidence with God, that God loves us, that He has adopted us, we are His children, his sons and daughters, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. But then it flows out inevitably in a kind of a horizontal confidence to the outside world, especially in the context here in the face of persecution, before human opposers. Unshakable confidence in the face of human beings who had opposed us and persecute us, and would be hostile toward us. I think, for example, of the confidence of Peter and John after the day of Pentecost, you remember how the ministry continued? And there was a beggar there by the temple gate called Beautiful. And he wanted some money and Peter and John said, "Silver, gold, I don't have, but what we do have, we give you in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and walk." And then they're arrested for doing this miracle. Brought in before the Sanhedrin, the very group that had condemned Jesus to death. Remember that just a very short time before that, Peter in a cowardly act of selfishness had denied Jesus three times. But God had worked in his heart, Amen, hallelujah. He transformed him. Jesus had shown Himself alive from the grave, the Holy Spirit had come, he was a different man.

And John was with him and the two of them are so bold, so confident in front of the Sanhedrin, they're unshakable. They haul these men in and ask... They're asked to give an account for this miracle that was done. And Peter and John filled with the Holy Spirit said, "Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is "'the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.' Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Oh, what unshakable confidence they had. Were they afraid of dying at that moment? Not at all. Not at all. They were fearless and bold, and it was note worthy in the text. When they saw the courage of Peter and John, they realized that they were un-schooled ordinary men, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. That kind of boldness that goes first vertically with God, that God loves me, my sins are forgiven, I'm going to heaven when I die. That God has adopted me. Nothing can separate me from the love of God. Then flows outward in times of persecution, that sword, famine, nakedness, danger cannot separate me from that love.

The Apostle Paul writes about it in Philippians, talks about the persecuted church there in Philippi. And he said he wanted them to stand firm as one man contending for the cause of the Gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed and that you will be saved and that from God, for it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him. So there is that confidence of not being frightened in any way. What a sign it is to the outside world. So what's going on here in Hebrews 10? Well, in this chapter, the author is summarizing all the benefits that Christ gives, the benefits of that superior Priest, Jesus the Son of God, superior in every way, to the Levitical, the ironic priest, superior in every way offering a perfect once for all sacrifice, the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin, but Jesus offered for all time, His own blood as a perfect final offering for our sins, that's the Gospel.

I prayed at the beginning that I would preach the Gospel, friends, that's the Gospel, the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for sinners, you trust in him and your sins will be forgiven, that's it. And it brings in a New Covenant, because in the Old Covenant, Jesus could not have been a priest. But in a New Covenant, now establish this New Covenant in His blood, promises the full forgiveness of sins, there are adoption as sons and daughters, a transformed heart, it's a better Gospel. And as a result, we have a boldness, a confidence to enter the most holy place by a new and living way, into the very presence of God by the new living way that is the body of Christ. We have this incredible access and confidence. He's saying, "Don't throw that confidence away." That's what he's talking about. Does that makes sense? That's the confidence that He is discussing here. It's based on the word of God, it's based on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We're going to get later in the Book of Hebrews, sometime in the year 2014 or something. I don't know what pace. We're just moving along slowly, but in Hebrews 13:5 and 6, "Because God has said, 'never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.' And so we say with confidence, so we say with confidence, 'The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid, what can man do to me?'"

What Does it Mean to “Throw Away” Confidence?

Okay, well, that's the confidence. What does it mean to throw away your confidence? It's a negative command here. Do not throw it away, don't throw that confidence away. Well, I think you do it actively by sinning, by yielding to temptations. Or passively by having the root of that confidence, that root system eaten away little by little. And so, you're drifting away from Jesus, little by little, by little compromises, by little works and actions, by things you do and don't do, little by little the confidence withers and shrivels, and it's not what it was. So, either quickly actively by gross sin or passively by little accumulated actions that are sins, in a way you throw away your confidence by sin. That's how you do it. I thought about how could I illustrate this? Let me give you two practical illustrations; one, a Christian man, let's say, walking with the Lord, attending church, going to Bible study. Faithful, serving, confident, excited about Heaven, but he's got to besetting sin that comes in and he starts to make some compromises and he starts to sin and he violates his conscience.

And then starts to do this more and more. You go talk to that individual after a period of time, and he has thrown his confidence away. If he's a genuine Christian, he can be restored, God can reach out and reclaim him, but he's in a dire situation. He has in effect taken an axe in his own hands and chopped the root system of his confidence down by his sin. He has shriveled it up himself by his own hands. Or take a second illustration, let's talk in a foreign culture. Let's say a Muslim country, maybe Indonesia or something like that, and there's a Muslim woman there, young woman, and she has a dream one night, and in that dream, she finds out that there's a woman who will meet her in the capital city of her country and tell her a message by which she can be saved. And she believes that dream and goes to the city. And there sure enough, a woman finds her, introduces herself to her and knows her name, miraculously. She's never met her before, and that woman is a Christian and she shares the Gospel and this young Muslim woman believes, trust in Christ. And the woman evangelist gives her a Bible, she takes it home and hides it from her father, and her brothers, and secretly starts feeding on the Word and growing and her assurance starts to grow.

One terrible day her father discovers the Bible and beats her. Her brothers yell at her. She's a shame to the family, but her faith is strong. She knows she's going to heaven. Little by little, she can't stay there anymore. The persecution level gets too great and she goes and moves to the city. She finds some low-paying job as a seamstress there, struggling to make ends meet, exhausted every day, leaves off reading the Bible, starts to grow weaker and weaker in her faith, has no good Christian fellowship, and she meets a young Muslim man at a coffee shop, and he shows her some interest and the relationship proceeds and she has warnings through the spirit not to pursue it, but it's hard to say no, because her life is so tough and so bleak. At one point, she reveals to this young man that she's a Christian, he's not really much of a Muslim frankly, and he's not interested in religion, he he's not interested in Christianity, and he says I don't really care what you do in your private life, just don't bring me any public shame. She's at a fork in the road isn't she? What does Hebrews 10:35 say to her? Do not throw away your confidence. Do not throw it away on a relationship, don't throw it away on a sin, because it will be richly rewarded. What is the rich reward of confidence? What are we talking about, this rich reward?

We often associate the word reward with merit, right? Something you deserve, something you have earned. But it is not the case here dear friends. What is the rich, the lavish reward that's going to be, the Greek is really interesting here, bestowed on you in some way. A richness that's going to be bestowed on. It's hard to get across in the English. But it's going to be richly, this confidence will be richly rewarded. Well, the first time reward has ever mentioned is the final reward in the end. "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, I am your very great reward." It is God Himself, who is the reward of confidence, it is fellowship with God forever in heaven, it is to be able to see Him face-to-face and be His servant and stand by His side and serve Him forever and ever and find the joy and blessing of that new heaven and new earth, that is the rich reward of confidence. That's what you get. Because Without faith, it's impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him. There's your reward, it's God Himself. And so don't throw away your confidence, because it has a rich reward and it's God Himself in Heaven.

And so therefore, the author gives us this simple statement. You need to persevere, you have need of endurance. Look at Verse 36, "You need to persevere, so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised." Hebrews is the book of perseverance. Hebrews 12:1, we are to "run with endurance the race marked out in front of us." You need perseverance, you must have it. Without perseverance, you will not finally be saved. So endurance or perseverance in the faith is part and parcel of our salvation. It's what God promises to do for you, not only to begin your faith, but to nourish it, and sustain it until you need it no longer. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, and when you are seeing what you want and when you are receiving what you have hoped for, you don't need faith anymore, it's temporary. But while you're in this world and while Jesus is still invisible to you, you must have faith. And so, therefore, you must have endurance in faith. You need endurance. In Luke 8:15, in the parable of the seed in the soils, the seed goes out, the Gospel message goes out and there are different kinds of heart reactions to it.

But there is that fourth soil, that rich soil, it produces a crop 100, 60, 30 times what was sown. And Luke 8:15 says, "The seed on the good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the word of God retain it and by persevering in it produce a crop." That is the Christian life, friends. You might wonder, where in the world did I get a noble and good heart?  It's a gift of God to you. And so also is the endurance and perseverance needed to bring forth the harvest. It's a gift too, but you have to have it. And so, here is that mystery of divine sovereignty, human responsibility, God's action on you, your requirement that you must persevere. Romans 2:7 teaches the same thing. "To those who by persistence in doing good, seek glory, honor and immortality, He will give eternal life." That's the Christian life. It's a persistence in doing good, a persistence in the Christian life, perseverance.

So, this endurance I say to you, is part of the equipment, the sovereign God gives to His elect. It's part of what He gives them so that they may be finally saved. It's the work of God in you, but it's also your work and your responsibility too. You are to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. There it is, Philippians 2:12 and 13. You must have perseverance. It is given by the Spirit, alright? The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace. What's the next one? Long-suffering or patience, perseverance. It's a gift of the Spirit of God. It's something the Spirit works in you. It's part of the Christian life. Revelation 1:9, John from the island of Patmos, wrote these words, he said, "I John, your brother and your companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus." It's part of being in Jesus; patient endurance. But it is our responsibility to develop that perseverance. We must endure. We must persevere. 2 Peter 1:5-6. "Make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control perseverance." You are to make every effort to add to your faith, endurance or perseverance. It's your job. It's your responsibility.

How Do You Develop Perseverance?

Well, how does it happen? How do you develop perseverance? How do you grow in perseverance? Well again, God gives it, Romans 5:5, sorry, Romans 15:5 says, "May the God who gives endurance and encouragement…" may He give you endurance. Alright. He gives it. Verse 4 of that chapter, Romans 15:4, says this, "For everything that was written in the past, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope." So endurance flows from the pages of the Bible. You will gain endurance as you're in the word of God, as you are saturating your mind in scripture, feeding on the word, you're going to get stronger in the Christian race, you're going to have greater and greater endurance from the Bible.

So you feed on God's word. If your endurance is low that means you're really not in the word. May be other reasons, but I think that's a fundamental reason why. But endurance also comes through God ordained trials, doesn't it? As you go through certain things God has got the hammer out and He is tinkering with your heart. He's working on you like a blacksmith or something, or a skilled craftsman. And He is working endurance into you through those trials, alright? And those trials either maybe yours alone, something you're going through, but it could be trials of those that you know about, people you know about. So first, your own trials. It says in Romans 5:3, "More than that we rejoice in our sufferings." Because we know that suffering produces perseverance." So as you go through trials, as you suffer through trials, God is working perseverance in you.

Or even clearer, I think, is James 1:2 through 4, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work, so that you'll be mature and complete, not lacking anything." So as you go through trials, God is building endurance in you. But you can also benefit from the trials that other people go through. You don't even have to know them personally. But you can benefit from the trials that others go through. Listen to this. 2 Corinthians 1:6. Paul was going through a terrible trial, and he wrote about it to the Corinthian Church. This is what He says, 2 Corinthians 1:6. "If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer." Let me put it in simple terms: We're going through a hard time for your benefit oh Corinthian Church, so that by you, from afar watching what we're going through, you can get stronger in your Christian life too. Your endurance comes through my suffering. That's what he's saying.

Again, Philippians 1:14, the Apostle Paul says, "Because of my chains, because of my imprisonment, most of the brothers of the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly." In other words, because someone else is in chains, they aren't afraid of being in chains anymore. Do you see that? So you can grow in endurance by reading about the persecuted church. You can grow in endurance by reading about martyrs, people who died centuries ago. Just as you read their stories you can grow in endurance. I think that's part of the whole point of Hebrews 11, we're about to head. What a magnificent journey we're about to embark on in Hebrews 11. But as we have this great cloud of witnesses, we start to see how they have lived their lives, these men and women of God, who went before us and courageously lived for the Christian faith, and we can grow in endurance by that.

So, be in the word, expect God to give you endurance, suffer well as you go through your trials and learn from the sufferings of others. That's how you grow in endurance. I say to you endurance is necessary. You must have it or you will not continue, obviously, in the Christian life.

Perseverance for a Purpose

You must have it so that, the Scripture says here, the passage says here, so that you can serve God's purpose in your own generation. Look what he says, "You need to persevere so that, when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised." God has a will for you. He has measured out good works for you to do. He's got works for you to do. He wants you to do them. He wants you, as it says in Acts 13, "When David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep." So God has a purpose for you, and when God is done with you, He's going to take you home. Until then you've got work to do.

And so you need perseverance so you can do the will of God, you can finish the race in front of you, and do all those good works that God has. So, when God's done with you, He will kill you and take you out of the world and bring you to Heaven. He'll take your life. Does He have that right? Does God have that right? Yes, He does. He has the right to give life and to take it back, but He's doing it to bring you home. It's better by far, dear friends. And so when you have served God's purpose in your generation, when you have finished this race, you will lay aside all these burdens and He'll take you home. But in the meantime, all day long, we are being killed like sheep for the slaughter, Romans 8:36, that's what we're here for, to do God's work. So we need to have endurance, and at the life of that, at the end of a life of that kind of endurance, comes that promised reward.

Because, dear friends, Verse 37, the time is very short. The time is very short. "For in just a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay." The author here is quoting Habakkuk in Chapter 2:3-4. More on that in a moment. But he says, "He who is coming... " In the original context, in Habakkuk, the verse refers to the; vision is coming, the vision is coming and will not delay. The author to Hebrews here makes it just Christ-centered at that point, the one that the visions pointing to. He just makes it Christ when He says, "Christ who is coming will come and He will not delay." So Christ is coming to us in a very little while. So how does Christ come to us in our suffering? Well, He comes to us in our life. He comes to us in our death, and He comes to us at the end of history. In our life, He comes to restrict the trial so that they're not worse than we can bear. He measures out that trial, so that it's not worse than we can handle.

Think about the church and Smyrna. It says in Revelation 2:10, "Do not be afraid of what you're about to suffer. I tell you the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for 10 days." 10 days. So Christ has limited the suffering of the church in Smyrna. It's going to be 10 days. I don't know if it's a little 10 days, but a short time, He's going to limit it. So He comes to us in our suffering to limit our trial, so it's not worse than we can bear. And in the middle of it, the spirit of Christ rests on you and He helps you. Think about the Apostle Paul, alright? He was going through a hard time. He was tired of getting beaten up. I think about. He's not a robot. He's a human being. Every city where he went, preached the gospel, he was getting beaten up. He was getting stoned. He was getting beaten with rods. He was getting imprisoned. His blood was being shed.

And I think he reached the point where he said, "I can't keep doing this anymore, Lord." And so the church at Corinth there, in Acts 18, it says, "One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision. He said, 'Do not be afraid. Keep on speaking and do not be silent. Because I am with you and no one is going to attack you and harm you, because I have many people in this city." So while you stay here in Corinth, I'm going to give you a break.  I'm going to give you an island of peace. So settle in here for a while and preach and go get the elect, go get the people of Christ in the city, and preach for them. I'm going to give you that." And then at the very end of his life, when he was going to die, and He knew it, still he says, 2 Timothy 4, "At my first defense no one came to my support. Everyone deserted me. I'm all alone. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me, the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion's mouth. The Lord is going to rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely into His Heavenly Kingdom, to Him be the glory forever."

What does it mean, "The Lord stood at my side and gave me strength."? Jesus in some amazing way, came and stood by Paul and helped him when he preached the Gospel to Nero. I mean, what an incredible moment that was in redemptive history, but he stood there and preached the Gospel to the Roman Emperor, and Jesus helped him do it. He wasn't alone. So in a very little while he who is coming will come. He will come in your life to restrict the trial, so it's not more than you can bear and to help you get through it. Then He's going to come to you in your death, as I said, and He's going to take you out of this world. 2 Corinthians 4:17 says that our light and momentary troubles are not worth comparing, but the glory and those trials are preparing us for a glory that the Lord is bringing us to. And so, at the time of death, He comes for His own and brings you out of this world into heaven.

But in just a very little while, Jesus is coming to end human history. Amen? He is coming soon. "He who is coming will come and He will not delay." Now, you would say, "I don't know that that's what it's talking about here, because it says, "In just a very little while." The Greek word, micron, is in there. In just a micron of time, He's coming. You're like, "Well, it's been 2000 years. That's a long micron there. That's an awfully long time." But you know, the final chapter in the Bible, Revelation 20:2, Jesus says three times He's coming soon, "Behold I am coming soon. I am coming soon." "He who testifies to these things says, 'I am coming soon.'" "I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have." And then John says, "Amen, come Lord Jesus." It is a very short time compared to eternity, isn't it? A day is like a thousand years. A thousand years is like a day. He's coming soon. "He who is coming will come and will not delay."

Verse 38, "But my righteous one will live by faith and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with them." So here we have Habakkuk 2:4, a key text in the Bible. It's one of the most important texts of the Old Testament. I know that because it's quoted in such strategic places in the New Testament. For example, Romans 1:16-17. Romans is the best, clearest exposition of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the best. In Romans 1:16, he says, the apostle Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, the righteousness that is from faith to faith, just as it is written, the just or the righteous will live by faith." That's Habakkuk 2:4. What a key moment for that text of scripture. "You will be justified or made righteous in God's sight by faith alone, apart from works."

So he quotes it also in Galatians 3, because the Galatians had lost track of the Gospel. They didn't seem to understand justification by faith, apart from works anymore. And so he quotes it there in Galatians 3:11-12, "Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith." And now he quotes it here at the end of Chapter 10, to show I think what kind of life comes from true justifying faith. That life, the life you live, you ongoingly live a life of faith, the righteous will live by faith, not just at that moment, the moment of the crusade where you came forward or you heard the gospel and prayed the prayer. But this is the kind of life you will live. It's a life of endurance in good works, right? It's a life where you're running the race right to the end. That's what it means, the righteous will live by faith. That's the kind of faith that saves.

Now, what's going on in Habakkuk 2? Remember the prophet Habakkuk, was grieved by the wickedness of Israel. He cries out against it. God says, "I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to send the Babylonians, and they're going to destroy this place and kill most of the people." Not the answer Habakkuk was hoping for. When I preached it I called it, out of the frying pan into the fire, alright? This is worse. And so, he says, "Look, I don't get it. I don't know what you're doing. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to station myself, and I'm going to wait until you give me an answer, because I just don't get it." And that's where he says, "The Revelation is coming. It's coming. It's not going to delay." The author personifies it and points to Christ. But the answer of Habakkuk is marvelous. There's an individual answer. There's an answer that talks about the wicked Babylonians, and what's going to happen to them, but it doesn't name them, because it's true of any world conquering pagan empire. And then finally, God's kingdom; a three-fold answer in Habakkuk Chapter 2. The individual, through the rise and fall of history, the ebbs and flows of all of history, individual sinners are justified by faith. That's the first answer that God gives Habakkuk.

Secondly, if you're worried about the Babylonians, what goes around comes around. They come in as a conqueror. They're going to go out conquered. That's what happens, the rise and fall of the world. You know why? Because ultimately, third answer, The Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. I am building a kingdom and empire that's going to cover the whole Earth. They're competing with me. They will lose. I win. So I am building an eternal kingdom of glory, and that will not be stopped. Individuals will come into that kingdom by faith. That's the full answer Habakkuk 2, one of the great chapters in the Bible. And that's what the author reaches for to say, "You need to live an enduring life, the rest of your life running this race with endurance." That's what you need to do.

And if so, then with Habakkuk, you can celebrate, no matter what happens. It doesn't matter how bad things get. In Habakkuk 3:17-19, it says, "Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights." Do you want to live a life like that? Do you want that kind of joy and energy and power just coursing through your spiritual veins? And say, "I don't care what happens to me in this world. I am free to serve Christ, because I'm going into that glorious kingdom that he's building by faith. I'm going to go there and I will live that kind of life."

 And the faith that justifies continues through all of that adversity right to the end. That's what he's saying here, "My righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him." Do you hear that tone of warning? It's consistent with the Book of Hebrews. Book of Hebrews is a serious warning epistle, and he's just recapitulating what he's been saying all along. You can't shrink back from Jesus and go on into Heaven. You can't look Jesus and the gospel in the face, study it, know it, come to understand it, and then turn your back on it and walk away and go to Heaven. You can't shrink back. If you shrink back you will be destroyed. We'll get to that in a moment. But that's what it's saying here. Here it just says in Verse 38, "If he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him, but we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed." So the shrinking back leads to hell. It leads to destruction. He's saying, "If you shrink back, I will not be pleased with you."

You're thinking, "Well, is that a big deal for God not to be pleased with you? Oh yes. It was for pleasure that God shows us before the foundation of the world, right? "Praise be to the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ... " Listen, "In accordance with His pleasure and will." It pleased Him to choose you in Christ. And as Jesus put so sweetly, I love this, this is Luke 12:32, "Fear not little flock," This is Jesus speaking, to you, "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom."

Oh, that's one of those three by five card verses. Put it up in here. I mean, "Fear not little flock, the father enjoys giving Heaven to you." Doesn't that just dispel bad views of God the father? I mean, He loves giving you Heaven. It's His good pleasure. Well, this verse says, if you shrink back however, He will not be pleased with you. Romans 8:8, says. "It is impossible for the carnal mind, to please God." He is at enmity with God. So this is a big deal if God is not pleased with you. God takes no delight in a cowardly person who shrinks back, who will not persevere. So, in order to make us pleasing to Him, He works endurance in us.

And so, Verse 39, final salvation is assured only to those who persevere. "We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but are those who believe and are saved." Oh, praise God if you can say that with confidence, Amen? I am not included among those that shrink back. I'm not going to drift away. I'm not going to turn away and I'm not going to fall away from Jesus. That's not going to happen to me. Why? Because God is in me sustaining my faith, and I'm not included among those that are going to turn back to destruction, and that's what we're talking about. Hell. It's hell. "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction and many enter through it."

That's the destruction. If you shrink back you're destroyed; Verse 39. Romans 9:22, "What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of wrath prepared for destruction." It's the same word. This is hell that we're talking about here in 10:39. Those that shrink back are destroyed in hell, but we are not among them. Amen? We are not among them. We are of those who persevere, literally, to the saving of our souls. That's literally what it says. So, in persevering you receive the goal of your faith, the salvation of your soul. That's what this text is teaching.

So what application can we take from this. First and foremost, look to Christ crucified again. I've already preached the Gospel. I never tire of it. God sent His son in a human body, who lived a sinless life, died on the cross, His blood shed for sinners like you and me. If you trust in Him, simply trust in Him, you will be justified or forgiven of all your sins. Look to Him again. For me, I've been hearing that now for 29 years. I am not tired of it yet. I want to feed on that truth. I want to come to Christ again today. I want to feed on Christ crucified and risen. I want to look to that and say, "That is my salvation. That is the power of God, to get a sinner like me to that heavenly place. I look to it again. I embrace it again. That is my confidence and I'm not going to throw it away. So if I could give a simple three-part summary of what I've said today. Hope, leading to obedience, leading to inheritance. Hope, obey, inherit. Is that clear enough? Hope based on the promises of God filling your heart with Heaven. Hope then obey His word consistently, persistently walking with Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, obey and you will inherit.

That's what this text is telling us. So therefore, can I urge you to cherish your assurance, your confidence. Cherish it. Don't damage it. Love your assurance. Embrace your assurance. Feed your assurance. Don't damage your assurance. You can be justified and have a very weak, or a practically non-existent assurance. It can happen from time to time. There's a journey that leads to that deplorable state. I would urge you, don't go that journey. Don't test how much can a justified person sin and still go to Heaven? That's not a worthy journey, friends. Can I commend you to turn away from it? Let's not try to find out how much a justified person can sin and still go to Heaven.

Instead, cherish your assurance. Feed your assurance by meditating on the word, by learning God's laws, holy law, and by the power of the Spirit obeying Him, doing what He's commanded you to do by the power of the spirit, live that life and your assurance is going to get stronger and stronger. Every temptation that comes, every flaming arrow of temptation that comes, you lift up the shield of faith and you extinguish that flaming arrow, your assurance will go up. I guarantee it; guarantee it. Every flaming arrow that finds its mark your assurance will be drained a bit.

Satan can't kill us. Amen, Hallelujah. He can't kill us, but he sure can damage us. So you lift up that shield of faith and you hold it against every flaming arrow of the evil one. You fight the good fight of faith. Feed your assurance. Be in church. Meditate on God's word. Have your daily quiet time. Be in good Christian fellowship. Be in accountability relationships. Men with men and women with women, find somebody who can pray with you, and hold you accountable. Be part of that. Cherish your assurance. Think often of your rich inheritance. Think about Heaven a lot, more than you do. Read Revelation 21 and 22, I think once a week at least. Read those chapters. Just find out just how beautiful the place is that you're going to. Remind yourself again and again, of what is your inheritance. Think about it. Fear shrinking back. Fear that. I think the Christian life is to be run with an amazing balance of fear and confidence. All the time. You're fearing sin and fearing the assaults and all that, in your own flesh. You're serious about that. Those are serious threats. But at the same time, you're totally confident that God, through the power of His Word, can enable you to overcome them.

Let's run together, shall we? And if I can just put in a plug for the men's retreat. Men, we need each other to fight this fight. That's what this is all about. The men's ministry is to help men fight together. Let's not fight alone. We're such independent people so often. So if you can make time, November 4th and 5th, to be at the men's retreat, please do it. I know it's a sacrifice. And now, I am shamelessly appealing to your wives. Bug your husbands. Pray for them. Persuade them. Encourage them. Exhort them. Provoke them and spur them on to love and good deeds. And say, "Hun, I can do without you for that period of time." And make the sacrifice. Let's band together, shall we men? And pray for each other and run this race with endurance. Close with me in prayer.

As we come to this text, Hebrews 10, particularly verse 34, I believe we're coming to the reason why the author wrote the whole epistle to begin with. This one verse is why he put pen to paper. That's what I believe. Now I know you hear me make many dramatic statements like that. This is the most important, or this is the center piece etcetera. But I really believe that the author wanted to preserve something fragile in the hearts of those that he was writing to. He wanted to preserve in them a perspective of faith, which liberated them from any need to protect what they had in this world, so that they could live freely for Jesus. Unafraid. Not holding anything back, because they were so filled with a sense of the glory that was waiting for them in the future world. And that that was threatened because of the persecutions they were going through. It was threatened, and he wanted to preserve it. And so, we see in verse 34, this statement about them. "You joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions." Profoundly powerful themes that flow from that one verse. And the author, knowing that these people were fragile in their faith in that perspective, it was fragile, it was under assault by the devil, took up pen and paper and wrote the book of Hebrews. And so in order to understand fully how powerful this is, we need to understand our context and theirs, and then get into the exegesis.

Suffering From Prosperity?

So let's try to understand our context why we need to hear this verse, this passage today. The Christian Church in America, suffers from about 350 years of dominance and prosperity. That's how John Piper began his preaching on this passage, and I found it compelling. Let me say it again. The Christian Church in America suffers from about 350 years of dominance and prosperity. What do we mean by dominance? Well, from the time that the Puritans established the city on a hill in the Boston area in 1630, from that point on, Christians have been generally accepted as such in this society, in this culture, generally welcomed as Christians.

Our Christian faith has helped us in this culture, generally. And so, we have done well, it has been profitable to be a Christian in America over that period of time. Beneficial to be a Christian. Dominance also in that no other religion has had anywhere near the influence that Christianity has had on American history, not even close. Not Hinduism not Buddhism, not Islam, not Animism or polytheism or atheism. It's been Christianity consistently dominating our history more than any other religion. Dominance.

What do we mean by prosperity? Well, because of our Christian ethics, because of our Christian worldview, we have prospered, we have done well. We've been liberated from certain besetting sins, alcohol, drug abuse, laziness. We have redeemed the time, we have labored and we have become prosperous because of our Christian faith. And so our Christian faith gives us a sense of prosperity and an expectancy of it. And so dominance and prosperity.

What do we mean by suffers, that the Christian church in America suffers from this dominance and this prosperity? Well, it has created in our hearts as 21st century American Christians, a certain expectancy of success and prosperity and comfort that is not consistent with the way that the New Testament describes a Christian life. We expect to do well, we expect to be successful, we expect to be healthy, we expect our family lives to be orderly, we expect our society to be clean and orderly, we expect these things. And that causes us to be anemic in the Christian life. It causes us to be weak in what we try, what we attempt for the glory of God. We're weakened by this expectancy. And we've suffered from it. We are not as strong as our brothers and sisters in Christ who do not enjoy that kind of a positive relationship with their surrounding culture and the government in their country, etcetera. We are not as strong spiritually as they are. We don't endeavor the same kind of courageous things for Christ that they do. And so we suffer from it.

As I thought about these themes as they were being developed as I listened to what John Piper said about that, as I meditated, I thought how true it is, and how joyful it is for me to be able to stand up and proclaim on the basis of this text, the remedy whereby we can be liberated. I yearn to be liberated, don't you? To be freed from those invisible chains that hold us back from just living fully for Jesus at every moment. Don't you want to be liberated from that? And you know what it is that liberates you? It's faith. That's why we're going immediately from this right into Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, that's what it's about. Is to promote within us, this kind of bold confident assurance and other-worldly way of living, that we need so very much.

As I was thinking about these things, I was thinking about this phrase that we've come to know, "The American Dream." One writer in 1931 described it this way, "Life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement." That's the American dream. Look, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but as Christians, for us as Christians, it has a dark side. And I just feel that this text, that the book of Hebrews is a warning to us, it's a warning epistle. And it's exhorting us to watch out for the dark side of the American dream. Okay. That's our context, that's why we need to hear the text today. So we can be liberated, we can be missions minded, we can be evangelistic, we can be generous with our money, and our time, and use our gifts and be happy in terrible times of affliction and suffering. That's why we need to hear.

Persecuted for Being a Christian

What was going on for them? What was their context? Well, as we've said many times before, these were Hebrew Christian, Jewish people, who had made a profession of faith in Christ, probably testified to it by water baptism. But now their profession of faith in Christ was under daily assault. I say that based right on the text we're looking at today, this is where I got it, Hebrews 10:32-35. This section tells me they were under assault, they were having a hard time. And as a result, some of them were tempted to drift away or turn away or even fall away, apostatize from Christ because of that pressure.

And so the author gives them this book. The author gives them the book of Hebrews. And as it has unfolded before our eyes, we have seen that his strategy is to give us, I guess primarily the word superiority comes to my mind. The superiority of Jesus Christ and the New Covenant that He comes to give us, which results in a superior kind of life. And now we're kind of at that third aspect of the book of Hebrews, we've looked at the superiority of Christ or supremacy of Christ, we've looked at the supremacy or superiority of the New Covenant. And his priestly ministry within that New Covenant. And now we're getting to that aspect of the superior life that it produces, a different kind of life.

You should live a kind of life that non-Christians just don't understand, that just makes no sense to them. There should be, as far as they're concerned, an insanity to the way you live. This doesn't make sense. And that just flows from the life of faith that the author is giving us here. And it's powerful. So in the context then the author has told us that Jesus Christ is superior to anything and everything you find in the Old Covenant. These Hebrew Christians were being tempted to turn back from the New Covenant to Old Covenant Judaism, temple-based Judaism. And so the author says, "No, don't do it because Jesus Christ is superior to anything and everything you find in the Old Covenant." He's superior to the prophets who spoke at many times and in various ways. He's superior to the angels who mediated the New Covenant through Moses. He's superior to Moses who's merely a servant in God's house while He is the ruling Son over God's house.

He's superior to Joshua who brought them into a temporary Promised Land, but Jesus into a permanent and final Promised Land. He's superior to Levi and Aaron and that whole Levitical priesthood. And so he goes over in the book to start talking about the Levitical Priesthood which was the centerpiece of the Old Covenant. And say that Jesus' priestly ministry is superior in every way. A superior priest, He was to Levi. They were sinful men who died. Jesus is a sinless man who cannot die again, He is eternal, He will live forever as our great high priest. They offered an inferior sacrifice, the blood of bulls and goats, that's what they offered. But at the beginning of Chapter 10, we're told the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin, never could, never will.

But Jesus offers for all time, one sacrifice for sins, His own blood, superior in every way. And He offers it in a superior place. They ministered in an earthly man made tabernacle, set up according to the laws of God, but still just a copy, a pattern, a shadow of their true reality. The true reality is a heavenly reality, and that's where Jesus ministers on our behalf. Superior in every way, and the New Covenant that Jesus comes to establish and it must be a New Covenant because in the Old Covenant, He couldn't have been a priest. He was from the tribe of Judah, and that Old Covenant forbade Him from being a priest, but he establishes a New Covenant and that New Covenant is superior in every way. In the words of Jeremiah the prophet, "I'll put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts," that's regeneration. "I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his brother, or a man his neighbor saying, 'Know, the Lord,' for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest." That's the intimacy of our adoption and our intimate relationship with God. Consummated in heaven. "For I'll forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more." That's justification.

Old Covenant didn't do any of those three things. It's a superior covenant. And so the author in Chapter 10 now, is reminding them of this, he's summarizing, he's going over these same things again. And then he turns a corner and gives them a series of exhortations. Since we have all these glorious things in the New Covenant. Since we have a new and living way, an access into the presence of God by the body of Jesus, by the blood shed on the cross, since our hearts have been cleansed from a guilty conscience, since our bodies are washed with pure water. He's telling us all that we have. Then He gives us a series of exhortations. "Let us draw near to God. Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Let us provoke one another or stimulate one another, agitate one another to love and good deeds. And let's keep on encouraging each other and all the more as you see the day drawing near."

So he gives them all of that and then he gives them the most serious, the most severe, the darkest warning in the entire Bible, warning against apostasy where God could become your enemy. It is a dreadful thing, a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And so he gives this terrifying warning. And as we've talked before, but I explain again, the warnings are for us, the elect, the believers, they're for us, we must have these warnings. We must take in these warnings, we must heed them, and we will. If you're the elect of God, you've already come to saving faith, you know what you're going to do with the warning? You're going to take it seriously. And you're not going to apostatize, it's going to have its impact on you. And if you're just playing, if you're a gospel hypocrite you'll blow off the warning and you'll go to hell.

The warning is for us. The warning's for us. And so we heed it, and we take it seriously. And that brings us right to this point in the text that's their context. And I'm going to jump right to what I consider to be the centerpiece of it all.

Let's just go right to it and then I'll work kind of more or less backwards from it. And the centerpiece is in verse 34, "You sympathized with those in prison and you joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions." It's the point of it all. My desire is to create in you a yearning for that type of life, a yearning in your heart that you would live like that, free from earthly concerns to serve Jesus. That's what I want, just get to the heart of the matter. That's what I'm hoping that the Spirit will do through this text, right now.

Standing Firm for the Faith

But let's try to understand what was going on. Well, what was happening is that these Hebrew Christians, this church, this early Christian church was being persecuted harshly. Go back to verse 32. Talks about the earlier days of their walk with Christ, and he says, "You stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering." So there's persecution. They're being just directly attacked for their faith in Jesus, they're being persecuted. Now, we know that from the very beginning of the Christian faith, the beginning of the church, from the day of Pentecost on, there was immediately persecution by the Jewish authorities. The Sanhedrin, those that had put Jesus to death and immediately turn their sites on the church. And initially just kind of stunned into paralysis by the healing of the famous beggar sitting by the temple gate, didn't know what to do with that. They just let him go. But by chapter five in Acts, they are beating the apostles for their faith in Jesus, and warning them not to preach anymore in Jesus' name.

So immediately the persecution starts, through Jewish authorities. Wouldn't be long after that, that the Roman authorities would take over, and there would be a contest between, in effect, Christ and Caesar for centuries. And so persecution was part of the early Christian experience. And the author talks about it. He says that, "Remember how it was for you, you stood your ground." And maybe just simply endured. You didn't fall away during that time but you stood firm in your faith, during that time of persecution. And he calls it a great contest. The Greek word is athlesis from which we get athletic. It's kind of a wrestling match or a fight. And in this great contest, that's how you endured, in the middle of all of that it was a great contest. And he talks about, in the face of suffering, this tribulation, these trials. It could be anything, it could be a physical assault a beating with rods.

It could be something just as simple as public exposure to shame. He mentions that in verse 33, "You are sometimes publicly exposed to insult." That can hurt. Jesus doesn't blow it off during the Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are you," he says, "When people insult you." We shouldn't minimize that. For somebody to stand there, and filled with hate, say mean things is not nothing. And so these people were publicly exposed. They were in some way publicly shamed. You could imagine a group of people around them, mocking them, spitting at them or throwing dirt on them or something in that way. And just deriding them for their faith in Christ. Publicly. And persecution. Maybe they were even physically struck, maybe there was some kind of a beating. Maybe it had to do with more economic pressure. Maybe in the Jewish phase of the persecution, maybe the authorities came down, said, "You can't go to their businesses. You can't frequent their businesses." And maybe they lost money as a result, and they just didn't have a viable business anymore and they became poor.

I think probably this is why Paul was constantly raising money for the poor among the Saints in Jerusalem. They just weren't able to make a living anymore. Because the authorities spoke against them, against their faith. Persecution. Could be beatings, it could be economic, it could be insults. "Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution. And at other times, you stood side by side with those who were so treated." So in that case, a little bit different. Somebody else is being persecuted for their faith in Christ. And you're not, yet. But you say, "That's my brother, that's my sister. I can't let them go through that alone." And you push your way through the crowd, and you stand with them. You put your arm around them. You pick them up, you wipe their face from the blood or something. You're just there, and you share their persecution with them. Courageously. Showing compassion. It took great courage and at some point, it even got to the level of imprisonment.

Standing With Those in Prison

In verse 34, it says, "You sympathize with those in prison." So reading between the lines, we have to imagine what was going on. Is that at some point, these Christians were so shining their light before men that people were offended and were angry about it, and it got to the level of some kind of a court trial, some kind of a formal legal accusation against them and imprisonment. Either, it was a false accusation, or Christianity itself in some way, became illegal, and it was a true accusation, but based on an unjust law, in any case, prison resulted for some of them. Christians in the first century were accused of ridiculous things. It's just amazing some of the things that were said about our brothers and sisters who lived during that time. They were called atheists. I love that one, that one's my favorite one, because they didn't believe in the gods of the Greeks and the Romans. You remember how Polycarp in his martyrdom account, he was charged by them, swear away with the atheist. So he pointed to the crowd, and he said "away with the atheists," when they are the true atheists. We believe in the true God.

But we were accused of atheism, we were accused of cannibalism, because of the love feast that we would have because of the body and the blood of Jesus, that we're actually eating the body and the blood of Jesus, and so we were said to be cannibals. We were accused of rebellion against Caesar, because we would not worship Caesar as a god, but said Jesus is Lord, and so we were accused of being revolutionaries, which we weren't in one sense, seeking the overthrow of the Roman Emperor, we weren't, but we were accused of it. We were accused of incest, because we loved the brothers and sisters in Christ. All of these false accusations. Or as I said, maybe there was real legislation enacted against Christians, and they couldn't do anything but be imprisoned. But what happened was, again, as you read between the lines, it says you sympathized with those in prison. So what's going on is the church, as I envision, would be scattered throughout a city in smaller house churches cell groups, like our home fellowships. There wouldn't be one major gathering area like we have here.

And so the authorities would know of one particular cell or a couple of them. And on one horrible night, they would crack down on the Christians meeting in that house or in those houses, and drag them all away and put them in prison. But not everyone, not everyone. And they knew it, they hadn't gotten everyone. Let's say you are one of the Christians who wasn't arrested, what a terrible trial of faith that would be for you, because you knew what prison was like. It's nothing like what we experience, what we know in the 21st century, where the Eighth Amendment mitigates against cruel and unusual punishment. They had nothing against cruel and unusual punishment back then. It was awful. The prisons were awful dark, nasty places, filled with human filth, stench, disease, torture. You think about Paul and Silas, and they're in stocks and they're bleeding in the center of a darkened jail. I can't imagine what it must have been like, but worst of all, over the long term, there will be no medical care and no provision for food and water. Nothing. They didn't care what happened to you. There was no promise of a speedy trial, none of that. You were just there to die, really.

And if you didn't have an outside support system, to come in and bring you food and maybe clothing, some medical care and some water, you would die quickly. So now you are a Christian, and you know your brothers and sisters in another part of the city have been arrested, they were arrested tonight. What do you do, what do you do? And you know very well that the authorities are going to be noting who comes to bring them food and water. They would like nothing better than to get the whole group of them. So they just hold them out as bait. And you had enough faith, you had enough courage to sympathize with your brothers and sisters in prison and bring them what they needed to stay alive, during that time. "I was in prison and you came to visit me." You came by faith.

Joyfully Suffering the Plundering of You Property

And while you were there, you lost your property. While you were taking care of those in prison someone came and seized your possessions, your goods. Now again, as I imagine what would have happened, it was either done legally or illegally, didn't matter, effectively it's the same for you. Maybe it was a crazed mob that hated you as a Christian. And finally, they know that the time has come, there's a little more freedom and they just came and just plundered whatever you had and burned your house to the ground. So by the time you got back from prison, there's nothing left, you have nothing left in this world. Or maybe the government seized it, doesn't matter, but it's gone, it's gone.

I was talking to my kids about it. This morning, we're driving and I say, "I break our possession to three categories: Necessities, luxuries and momentos. I think it's valid three categories, right? So my kids started asking me, "Is this a luxury is that a luxury? That was interesting, interesting conversation. Is a refrigerator a luxury? That kind of thing. You guys can work through that and put a tag on everything you own, say necessity, okay, luxury, etcetera. And momentos.

So what's a memento? Is that a necessity or luxury, is neither one, it has nothing to do with the price of it, it has to do with the emotional value, it's something that was given, a gift. It might be in some sense worthless in one sense. Like art work done by a child at age three years and years ago, nobody would give you a penny for it, but it's priceless to you. And you came back that night, and it's all gone. Necessities, food, clothing, shelter, gone, You're now homeless, Luxuries, the extras that God blessed you with, those extra possessions that enhance and bless your life is gone. Your mementos are gone. It's all gone. And what does the verse say, "You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property." You joyfully accepted it. Now talking to my kids coming in this one, I said there's one of two explanations; either you're insane or you're a spiritual Christian. Either you're insane or you're a faith-filled Christian. One or the other.

What is the word accepted mean, the Greek word means welcome, to some degree, welcomed it. The same word is used in another place of the second coming of Christ, welcoming Christ. How do you do that? Well, you believe in the doctrine of providence, you believe that everything comes to you by the hand of a loving father. And you trust Him. And so they accepted it, but that's not all it says. There's an adverb there that's so astonishing. "You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property." He says. Joyfully. It's a super natural emotional reaction. "Praise God. All of my stuff is gone. Praise God that I've been plundered this night, it's all gone." Joyfully accepted. Now, this kind of supernatural, bizarre by the world's perspective, joy, is I tell you of the essence of saving faith. It's at the center of saving faith.

Jesus told us that, with the parable of the treasure hidden in the field, you remember that? The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in the field. When a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy, he went and sold everything he had and bought that field. It's dangerous to think; now he's got this treasure he can go back and get all his stuff back from the pawn shop, right? Get it all back. So he's got it all now, he has his original possessions and now he's got Heaven to boot. Oh be careful, friends. God is pushing us of it sometimes you can't have it all, you have to make a choice. And He gives you a choice.

And the man in the parable, joyfully turned his back on everything in the world so that he could have that treasure. That kind of joy is of the essence of genuine sanctification too. An irrational bizarre joy, it makes no sense at all to the unbeliever. But James commands us to have it in James 1. "Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. And Perseverance must finish its work, so that you will be mature and complete, not lacking anything." You must have that joy in order to be fully mature, to keep growing and accept what God's doing. You've got to have the trials, the good times don't sanctify you. Not alone, they don't. But you consider it pure joy.

It's the joy that characterized the apostles in Acts 5, I already mentioned when they were beaten, they rejoiced that they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name of Jesus. That's the joy in this text right here. Thank God you counted me worthy of being persecuted for Jesus. Thank you Lord, I'm a real Christian, I'm a genuine Christian. It's says other worldly joy. Well, how did they do this? Well, the text tells us how they accepted joyfully the plundering or the seizing of their property. Well, it's because they knew that they had a better and lasting possessions.

So the NIV, I like the ESV a little bit better. "Since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one." The difference is singular or plural. Well, the Greek really to some degree, could go either way, possession, the word goods, et cetera. It's one of those words that you're not sure of it's singular or plural. So it's not a bad translation but let's go with the ESV, let's go with the others that give us a singular possession. You knew that you had a better possession, something better than all of this stuff. And what could that be? I tell you, it's God Himself. It's Almighty God, who is the treasure hidden in the field. As CS Lewis put it, "He who has Christ, and all the world has no more than He who has Christ alone." The world is a nothing Compared to God, the world is a nothing, it's dust on the scales, all the nations are as a dust on the scales compared to Jesus. We have a better possession. And mirth and rust cannot destroy it, And thieves cannot break in and steal, because we have God.

"Fear not Abraham, I am your shield and I am your very great reward." Hebrews 11:6 will tell us, "Without faith, it's impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him." He is the reward of a lifetime of seeking Him. "Alright, you've been seeking me your whole life, now you have me, at last you have me, you have what you wanted." They knew, these first century Christians knew that they had a better possession, better in every way.

Psalms 73, "Whom have I in Heaven but You. And earth has nothing I desire besides You." Psalm 16, "You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy, at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I want to commend to you, Psalm 16:11, is the partner verse to Hebrews 10:34, it's a partner verse. It tells you what the better possession is and that it's lasting. God, is the better possession, in His presence is the fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures forever more. It's a lasting thing. But that's not all that God tells us about our future reward. He tells us that there's going to be a city, a new Jerusalem that's going to be glorious, and radiantly bright with the glory of Jesus, and you will want to be there, to put it mildly.

You will want to see that beauty as it descends like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. You want to be there, you want to walk along those streets of transparent gold, whatever that means. How could we even put into words what we will see? And these people, these first century Christians knew that they had a better city to go to, and that they had an inheritance that could never perish, spoil or fade, they knew that they had this. And Hebrews 13:14, it says that here, we do not have an enduring city, but we're looking for the city that is to come later. We're looking ahead as aliens and strangers in this world. And I think just look ahead in Hebrews, Hebrews 11:13-16, sums up what they knew, and how they were looking ahead. Just look at that passage, it says, "All these people were still living by faith when they died, they did not receive the things promised, they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers in this world." People who say such things, show that they're not thinking of the city that they had left. If they had been thinking of the country that they had left, they would have had opportunity to return, instead they were longing for a better country. A heavenly one. And because of that God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them."

There's nothing wrong, I say everything right, in looking forward to the city too. Because to me, the thing that makes the city so beautiful is the glory of God, and the possessions then become one and the same. Our stuff, our crowns, our inheritance, our chunk of the promise land, whatever. It's ours, it's our possession and we'll never lose it, we will enjoy it forever. We talked about that this morning too. How is it a lasting possession, you know what it is? It means when you've had that possession for a thousand eons, it brings you as much joy after that as it did the first moment you had it. Nothing on earth is like that, nothing.

Just talk to the kids at 5:00 o'clock on Christmas Day. The joy has already diminished. There is nothing on earth that has a lasting joy, but in Heaven, everything has a lasting joy, it never diminishes only increases. And because they knew that they had for themselves a better possession, and a lasting one. They joyfully accepted the confiscation, the plundering of their property.

And so what counsel does God give based on this? Well, to them who are being actively persecuted, He begins by charging them to remember how it was for them early on. "But remember the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings." And I just want to stop and just say, if you're drifting from Jesus, That's the remedy. Remember what it was like for you? Go back in your mind, remember, think again how it was. That's what the author does here. "Remember those earlier days."

That's what happened to Peter, remember Peter denies the Lord three times, remember, worst night of his life. Oh, is he drifting, and he's drifting quickly. And suddenly the rooster crows, remember? And then the text literally says, "Then Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken, and he went outside and wept bitterly." It's just the remembering, you remember what it was like? It's what Jesus gives to the church at Ephesus, who had forsaken their first love. He says, "Remember the height from which you have fallen, repent and do the things you did at first." Remember your earlier affection, is what He gives to the Jews through Jeremiah, the prophet. He said, "I remember that the beginning of your life with me as my bride, how as a bride you followed me through the desert to a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord…" We can hear the misery the grief in God's voice. He said, "You are my wife and you love me back then. I remember the devotion of your youth." So remembering.

And so for them they were to remember, they were to remember their enlightenment. Remember the earlier days after your enlightenment, the word literally means that a spiritual light has come into their hearts. A light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ, and the eyes of their heart were enlightened, they were opened. As Joshua shared earlier in Ephesians 1, the eyes of their heart were enlightened. The word is photidzo, from which we have photo and photography, if there's this light that came in them spiritually. But it's also used for how they then would let their light shine before men, and others would see their good deeds and praise God. And people were getting converted, the shining light in their lives, remember their enlightenment. And remember, you're suffering. Remember what you went through the things we discussed. And remember your courageous loyalty remember how you Joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property. Remember those days, remember your faith-filled knowledge, the fact that you have a better possession, and an abiding one. Remember how you just loved that and it brought you joy that night and during that time. Remember.

And he gives them then, in verse 35, "Do not throw away your confidence" your faith. Don't throw away that bold assurance. "It will be richly rewarded." We'll talk more about that verse next week, but that's what he tells them. That's his advice to them who are being actively persecuted.

But I think a responsible preaching from this text must ask this question in America, 21st century America; What does this text say to us who are not actively persecuted like they were? Does it say anything to me? If I don't have memories that I can go back to of when I was publicly shamed and beaten and dragged off into prison and put in stalks, and somebody had to feed me from the outside, I never went through that. What is our context here? What are we going through here? We have to be honest about that and say, that's really not been our experience.

So I would say, first of all, if I can urge you, just assess yourself by this passage. Just take your soul and line it up to this text. I don't want to start by just urging you to be a Christian, because this text holds up no good promise to you if you are not a believer. You don't have a better and abiding possession if you are not a Christian. There is nothing for you, but as it says in the text we just studied, a fearful expectation of judgement of raging fire. So I urge you to flee the wrath to come, and through faith in the Gospel. By faith in Jesus, receive the kingdom. Receive an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. Receive heaven as a free gift. Turn away from your sins, turn away from your wickedness and your rebellion. Turn away from your practical atheism and not thinking about God. Turn away from these things and flee to the cross of Jesus. He was hung on the cross, once for all, His blood shed for sinners like you and me. All you need to do is trust in Him and you will have a better possession, and an eternal one. So start there.

But if you know that you are a believer, you know you are a Christian, I want to ask you some serious questions. Have you been polluted or corrupted in some way by the American dream, by the dark side of the American dream? Have you been polluted by an expectation that things will go well for you in this life, materially, health-wise, in terms of your reputation with co-workers, and all that? Have you been polluted by expecting that in this world? We're like on a white-water expedition here sometimes, friends. And there are all these strong currents that are pulling us away from Christ, away from a genuine faith. And Jesus told us that a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions, but it seems like all of American culture is designed to try to refute Jesus' statement. "Oh yes, it does. Yes it does, a man's life most definitely consists in the abundance of his possessions and his pleasures and his trips and his experiences and his power and his success, that is life." Do you not see that? Do you see that in the ads that you see when you are watching something on TV, it's like it's telling you that. That is your life, this is life.

Jesus says, "No, it's not." But I'm just asking; Has that thought nod on your soul? Peter talks about things that wage war against your soul. Have you been, in some way, corrupted by that? The symptoms of it have to do with how much you are risking for Jesus now. Or another way to look at it is; How much of your life would make no sense to a non-Christian? If you believe that a man's life does consist in the abundance of his possessions, it will be impossible for you joyfully to accept the plundering of them. You can't accept it, you are actually going to fight it, aren't you? You are going to fight getting plundered, because that's your life, it's your livelihood, so to speak. You are going to fight and have those things protected. You are going to protect, you are going to have a life of self-protection. And so therefore you are going to value your reputation and your viability at work too much to share the Gospel with a co-worker. You are going to seek to protect your position there and you are not going to share with your boss. You are not.

You are going to value your fun and pleasure at a family reunion picnic, too much to share the Gospel with a lost relative, a lost father or mother, or uncle or cousin. "Hey, we were having a good time here, why spoil it?" You are going to seek to protect that fun feeling you are having. You are going to value your weekend hobby, whatever it is, your golf, your hunting, your antique shopping, or whatever it is that you would get excited about, too much to get involved in a church outreach on a Saturday. You are going to value your health too much to risk it on a mission trip to Haiti. You might get sick. I would say, based on my experience, not might, you will get sick. Every time I go to Haiti, I get sick, it's every time. And I know that, and it hinders me to some degree. I have to say like, "Do I want to do that again?" You will value your retirement portfolio and your future comfort in your retirement years too much to give sacrificially to missions and to other Christian things that God lays in your heart. You're going to protect these things. You are going to value your time too much to get involved in urban outreach or during rescue mission or job for life, or any of those things. International student ministry, you are just going to value and protect those things.

I tell you the whole point of the book of Hebrews, is to liberate you from that. Free you up. To loosen the chains that Satan's put around all these resource and get them flowing, so that by faith you can joyfully accept the things that will flow from you when you live sacrificially for God. Do you know, by faith, that you have a better possession and a lasting one, do you? Do you have a lively sense of that? Do you have a vigorous sense of that, today? And are you living for that Heavenly possession? Is it just giving you joy every day, is it giving you energy, you are just looking forward to it? Do you read Revelation 21 and 22 a lot? If not, do it? Read about what the new Jerusalem is going to be like. Read about the beauty and the glory of the place. Read about how marvelous it is that the gates are always going to stand open. And that the wealth of the nations are going to flood in through the gates. Read about the imposing size of that city, and the beauty of it, the majesty and the foundations of the walls. And the fact that there is a throne in the center of it all, and the river of the water of life is flowing clear as crystal right down the center. And the tree of life is there, and the leaves of the tree are there for the healing of the nations, and there's nothing harmful there, there's only beauty and health, and there's no more death and mourning and crying in pain.

Do you thrive thinking about your future inheritance? Are you living for it? And will you feel, turn it around, will you feel gypped if you die young or if a loved one dies young? Will you feel that you got ripped off? You know what that shows? It shows that you had a sense that there was something that really did belong to you and it was taken from you. This text says, "No, your possessions are on the other side, none of it's here." And so if it's a loved one that dies early, or if it's you and you know you are dying, do not feel ripped off and don't act like you feel ripped off. Please, for the glory of Christ, act like you are coming into your inheritance at last. And give those nurses and doctors something to think about if they don't know Jesus yet. Or another way to look at it is, would you feel jilted due to some of these things? We just had a wedding. Imagine, if at a wedding, if the bride or the groom didn't show up and how the other would feel jilted by it, and everyone that was there in their beautiful clothes, jilted.

Look, we're not owed these things in this life, and we're not going to get ripped off or jilted if we don't get them if they get taken from us. It's God's will. To God be the glory, let's live even more for Jesus, more than ever before. And so, I would say, as you assess yourself. Is your heart still as strong after Jesus as it was when you were first excited about being a Christian? Is it still passionate for Him? You are still living for that, you still love your quiet time, you just love praying, you love worship, you love being with the people of God. And if not, if you don't come up well with these diagnostic questions, then I just urge you to repent. I urge you to repent based on this text. I'm call on you to repent. I'm calling on myself to repent, to bring my life and conformity with the spirit of Hebrews 10:34, and to live a free life, and to start risking things for Jesus. And pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are in the first category, they are actively going through this right now. And they can read Hebrews 10 and know immediately what they're talking about. Just get to know the suffering persecuted church by the internet, that's the quickest way.

Go to websites like Persecution Project and some of these others and find out. And you will find pastors, I was reading about a pastor, Pastor Josef, who is in Iran and has the death penalty on his head. As far as I know, he's still not been executed. And they are charging him with apostasy from Islam. He says, "It's impossible, I was never a Muslim. And now I am a Christian, and this is an unjust charge against me." "Yes," they say, "but your parents were Muslim, therefore you can apostatize because you should have been a Muslim." That's the charge, that's how it's working there in Iran. But we have so many dear brothers and sisters in Christ in Iran and other places that are suffering imprisonment, persecution, even death, for Christ. Pray for them. Get to know what's going on in their lives, find out from those websites what you can do as an American Christian. And feed your faith, feed your faith.

Two verses in mind. I consider Romans 8:18, that "our present sufferings aren't even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Do you believe that? Feed on that, meditate on that. Or how about this one, 2 Corinthians 4:17, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." Light and momentary. Well read his resume of suffering at Chapter 12 of that book and you'll know what he considered light and momentary, beaten, flogged, ship-wrecked, stoned to death, so they thought. Light and momentary. Get to the point where those verses are what you really believe. And if you can't be arrested for your faith, if you can't get beaten or insulted or whatever, then could you please suffer well those trials that are common to all people. Suffer those as practice trials for ones that make them later. So if you are sick, if your spouse is sick or hurt, if you are having economic reversals, if there are certain adverse providences, that are coming in your life, count it pure joy whenever you face any of those things, and you are practicing them for the harder test later.

And if I could just simply urge you to just get busy evangelizing, you'll know what persecution is, at least the 21st century American version. Just start sharing the gospel on those settings. Share the Gospel at the workplace, share the gospel with your neighbors, share the gospel with your relatives, lost relatives. Just get going, and then you'll find out when Jesus said, "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in Heaven." Let's evangelize. Let's get the word out. What was the last time you opened your mouth and said something difficult? I was one for two this week, alright? The guy who cut my hair, there was just something about that situation that was hard for me to speak, and I felt ashamed but I did not share the Gospel, I didn't. I hope I might get another chance with him. But I just was timid, I kept talking to him, but his answers were brief and short and nothing was going, and I just couldn't get going, and then my hair cut was done. I need longer hair, I guess, or something, I don't know what. Longer hair for evangelism, for the sake of the gospel, that is not going to happen dear friends.

But then a guy came to fix something at our house and I had a good chance to share with him, and he said he'd like to come visit our church. He lives in Apex. And I don't know that he'd come, I hope he does, but we had a good time to talk. I want to be more faithful than that. I want to have more than those two opportunities. I want 20, 50 of them. I want to be a river of evangelism, and I want you guys to evangelize. Open your mouth and share the gospel and then persecution will come. It's not because you want persecution to come, but just because you want to see people saved because you love them.

One final word and I'm done. Just because we are not presently being persecuted in America, it doesn't mean it's going to continue that way. I don't know what the future holds, but it doesn't look bright for our relationship with the surrounding culture and with the government. Do you know what I'm talking about? Our president, President Obama, said, "This is not a Christian nation." He said that. Remember that? Interesting statement. I agree with the words but not the heart behind it. I think, I don't know his heart, but I know what I would mean by saying that, I mean, differently. I know that our citizenship's in heaven. I've known that all along, and I'm not expecting 100% of any political nation to be Christians, it's just not ever happened, so I don't expect that.

But I think he means it a little differently, and there are ominous overtones, not so much his intentions, but just where we're heading on that. And I don't know that it's the case that within our lifetime, within a generation or two, that there will not be government-sponsored persecution of Christianity in the United States of America. I don't know that that won't happen. And the best thing we can do is imbibe Hebrews 10 and other passages and get ready for it, and get our children ready for it and our disciples ready for it, because I think it's coming. It's the norm around the world and across church history. Let's close in prayer.

1741 in New England, one of the great times in church history, world church history, certainly in American church history, the Great Awakening was spreading like wildfire in many communities in New England and across the colonies, from north to south, from south to north. Many, many people being brought into the kingdom. Up in New England, the church was already ancient at that point, many, many decades. There have been people who had heard the Gospel, who had been infant-baptized, their ancestors were Puritans. They lived a certain kind of life, but now in the second and third generations, and beyond, they had a kind of a light attitude towards the things of God. They really didn't take them very seriously. The time was right for a renewal, a revival, an awakening, and it was spreading like wildfire under the Ministries of men like George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, preaching the gospel.

The revival had come with great power to a small community in Connecticut Suffield. Lots and lots of people had turned 95, people had pledged their commitment to Christ, so they had been churched before they knew that they were lost, and that they had turned to Christ through the hearing of the gospel and they had believed. And they were meeting daily for prayer and they were concerned that the Gospel continued to spread throughout Connecticut, and Western Massachusetts, different parts and in neighboring community of Enfield, nothing like that was going on at all.

Revival was just seemingly bypassing that community. And so they sent some missionaries to the neighboring town. Some people to preach the gospel, some people to reach out, and those people were met with basically a yawn; nothing really going on.

July 8th, 1741, the next missionary was Jonathan Edwards. He came and spoke, it was the middle of the week, it was a Wednesday service. And eye witness that was there said that the crowd that gathered was indifferent and close to unruly and rude. These were church people, if you asked them if they were Christians they would have said yes.

Edwards of course, preached the most famous sermon in church history, I think certainly American church history, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." The text he preached from, Deuteronomy 32-35, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them." The doctrine from the sermon was there is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of Hell, but the mere pleasure of God and that God is incensed that their sin. So, there you have the sermon text, and the doctrine, but the title comes from the text that we're preaching on today. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, look at verse 27, it speaks of "a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God."

And look at the very end of verse 31. "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." And if you just put all that together, you end up with this sermon title, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, comes from our text today. Now that sermon is famous or I really should say more infamous. It's in anthologies of literature, which is an odd place for it to end up, but I think it's the providence of God, Amen. So you're reading along, and you're reading all of these works of literature and you come across this oddity from American church history, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but it's usually mocked by those that present it, that teach it in school settings, etcetera.

John Piper thinking about the effects of that sermon and the way it's been treated in subsequent generations, even up to our present time, he asked these questions, and just thinking about it said, "What high school student is ever asked to come to grips with what is really at issue here in this sermon by Edwards? If the Bible is true, and if it says that some day Christ will tread His enemies like a wine press with anger that is fierce and almighty, and if you are a pastor charged with applying biblical truth to your people so that they will flee the wrath to come then what would your language be? What would you say to make these people feel the reality of texts like these? And if you're asked why is it that English Literature teachers and that many pastors who use kind of circumlocutions, and maybe skip the text entirely or just never preach on hell, or judgment, or wrath, why is it that they behave like that and Edwards preach like he did?

So plainly, so clearly, working on language, working on illustrations? Doing whatever he could to stimulate inside people inside their minds, a sense of the gravity of the judgment and wrath of God. Why is that? Piper surmised that if a bright student was there, he would pipe up and answer something like this. It's because he, Edwards, really believed in hell and they don't. And so, in today's text, in Hebrews 10:25-31, we come face-to-face with the wrath of the living God. It is not a popular doctrine, it's not an easy thing to preach on. People frequently come to church looking to be entertained, and in some way, diverted from the general pain and suffering of their lives to feel good for a little while before they go back to the fray. And so they're looking for something light and airy and something entertainment-oriented, and that's what's popular.

: This is not popular. But the question that's in front of us today, is, is it true? Is it true that the living God, the God, that really exists, the God who sits on His throne and who rules the universe has this kind of an active passionate response to human sin? Does he have this kind of wrath?

And not just against any sinners, but against those who had, in some sense, embraced the truth for a while and turned away from it. Is it true? That's what's in front of us, and in this text, we come face-to-face with these questions. The context here of our passage today, Hebrews middle of Chapter 10, we have had nine-and-a-half chapters of doctrine on the superiority of Christ who brings a superior covenant, resulting in a superior life. This is what we are talking about here, how Jesus Christ is superior in every way to all of the Old Testament figures. Superior to the prophets who spoke of old, superior to the angels who mediated the old covenant. Superior to Moses, who was merely a servant in God's house while Jesus is a son over God's house, superior to Levi, superior to Abraham himself, superior in every way.

And his priestly ministry, as we've looked at in detail is a superior ministry. He offers not the blood of bulls and goats in a temporary tent, a tabernacle, set up by human hands, but he offered for all time, once for all time, his own blood offered in the heavenly sanctuary for our final salvation, a superior work. And so these were Jewish people who had made some kind of profession of faith in Christ but under certain temptations and pressures, were being pulled on to turn their backs on Jesus and go back to Old Covenant Judaism, go back even more significantly to a life of sin. Away from their profession of faith in Christ.

And so, in the previous test we had a bunch of encouragements, a statement of what we have in verses 19 up though 24, chapter 10, "Therefore brothers since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is His body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God." And how marvelous is that? And so he's presenting the beauty and the attractiveness of the Gospel. But now in this text, he turns, the author does and gives us a serious warning. And so the combination of the enticement of joy and blessing, and happiness in the presence of God, plus the dire warning, concerning those who reject this gospel together as God's persuasion to you.

So we're looking at this warning, and the Book of Hebrews is rich with statements of grace, God's lavish grace to sinners is a unifying theme of this book. Way back at Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 3, After Christ had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven. So right from the very beginning of the book of Hebrews, we have mentioned purification for sins. And then at the very end, which we haven't reached yet in Hebrews 13:20, it speaks of the "God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant, brought back from the dead, our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep." And so you have at the very end, the blood of the eternal covenant, and Jesus as our Shepherd, resurrected from the dead. Bookends of grace, of the Gospel of grace. And right in the middle, statements like in Hebrews 9:14, how the blood of Christ cleanses us, cleanses our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God.

And the essence of the New Covenant in Hebrews 8:12, "I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more." Friends, this is the gospel that God sent His son. Born of a virgin at the right time and He lived a sinless life, and He died on the cross in our place. Suffered under the wrath of God, and that there is, at the essence of the sacrificial system of what Jesus did, an exchange, a transfer that happens, where our guilt has taken off of us 100% and laid on Jesus, and He suffers under the wrath of God for us in our place. God raised Him up on the third day, showing that that sacrifice was acceptable to Him, and that all we have to do to be justified is belief that gospel.

Simply by faith. We're going to see at the end of this chapter, chapter 10. "My righteous one will live by faith." It's just justification by faith. We are made right with God simply by faith. And so, I plead with you, I don't know all of you, I see some strangers here, I don't know. And even those of you that I know well, I don't know what's going on in your hearts, but I tell you this is the gospel. Don't leave here lost. You are under the sound of the Gospel right now. This and other places like the most powerful places on earth right now. You're hearing the Gospel, this is the gospel that can rescue you from the dominion of darkness and bring you into the kingdom of the beloved Son, trust in Him, believe in Him. And if you're hearing these words and you're just saying, your heart's rejoicing and saying, "That is the Gospel. I've been believing, now for decades," that's fantastic, keep believing that good news and proclaim it to lost people, out there.

So you're hearing me say these words, memorize them and say something like it to a lost co-worker this week. This is the good news, and so what I'm telling you is the Book of Hebrews is just woven through with the Gospel of grace. It's just woven through. But Hebrews also is powerfully clear about the wrath of God against sinners, just as clear. So back at Hebrews 2:3, it says, "How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? That's a threat, that's a warning, we will not escape God's wrath if we neglect or ignore such a great salvation. And then in Hebrews 3:11, "So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" And there God's wrath and His swearing, His promise, "You will not enter my rest." His rest is heaven. And God swearing in wrath that they will not enter. And then in Hebrews 6, that the dreadful picture of those who had once been enlightened, have tasted the Holy Spirit, have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, who then fell away saying it's impossible to renew them again to repentance and then gives us this analogy of land that drinks in all this rain and all these blessings and all this good stuff and produces nothing but thorns and thistles. "It's worthless," it says. In danger of being cursed, in the end it will be burned. These clear warnings throughout of the wrath of God against those who reject the gospel. But in the entire book there is no clear description of this wrath than in the text we're looking at today.

Look at verse 27, it speaks of "a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." In verses 28 and 29 it says, "Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished," et cetera? And then at the end, for we know Him who said, "'It is mine, to avenge I will repay.' And again 'the Lord will judge His people.' It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

And so we have clear descriptions in the text we're looking at today, of the wrath of God against sinners. We have a legal description in verse 27. It speaks of the judgment of God, fearful expectation of judgement, and so it's based on truth, it's based on God the judge. It's based on that heavenly court scene in which the court is seated and the books are open, and the whole human race is assembled and God judges by right judgment, and there's no deceiving the judge. The judgment of God, clearly depicted here, leading to wrath. There's also an emotional description of all this, it speaks of a fury of fire, a fury of fire is one of the translations here. Which results in terror, and terror is an emotion, it's an emotion here.

And so we have God's emotions, and then a corresponding human emotion that comes from it. So God has a zeal, there's a fire here, a passion. And God's zeal is for the glory of His own Son. You remember how it said in Hebrews 1:13, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot stool for our feet." God zealous for that. He burns with a passion that His son be glorified. And so there was a zeal, a raging fire of God's zeal, and I think we could extend it also to the fact that these folks are insulting the spirit of grace. And so, He is zealous also for the honor of the Holy Spirit. And so there is a sense of God's zeal for the glory of His own person. And that zeal is like a fire, a raging fire. And it results in a human emotion, an expectation of judgment. Expectation, what does that mean? I would contend that this is the dead opposite, the exact opposite of biblical hope.

Biblical hope is. I'm looking ahead to the future, and it's bright and glorious. It's going to be wonderful. I can't wait for it to come. Oh how beautiful it's going to be in the new Heaven, the new earth and I'm going to be there and I'm excited about that. And I'm happy about it, it brings me joy. That's hope, that's biblical hope.

Examples of the Fear of Judgement Fires

This is the exact opposite, a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire, it's exactly the opposite. And so these folks when they think about the future, their heart starts to well up with terror. They think about the judgment of God. Now, sometimes there are testimonies about how sometimes this will happen even on people's death beds. Reading about the death of Joseph Stalin, for example, his daughter Svetlana testified what it was like to watch him die. She said, "the death agony was terrible, God grants an easy death only to the just. He literally choked to death as we watched. At what seemed like the very last moment he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane, or perhaps angry and full of fear of death, then something incomprehensible and terrible happened that to this day I can't forget. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something up above and bring down a curse on us all, the gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace. The next moment after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh." and he was dead. Foretaste perhaps.

Thomas Paine who wrote, the terrible book, "Age of reason," an atheistic book in which he openly stated that the New Testament accounts of Jesus's birth, life, resurrection are clearly frauds. It's what he wrote in age of reason. But at the end of his life, this is what he said, "I would give worlds, if I had them, that the Age of Reason had never been published. Oh Lord, help me, Christ help me." And he cries out to people standing around, "No, don't leave me, stay with me, send even a child to stay with me, for I'm on the edge of hell here alone. If ever the devil had an agent, I have been that one."

So Thomas Scott said this: "Until this moment, I thought that there was neither God nor hell, now I know and feel that there are both, and I'm doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty."

So, Francis Newport who was the head of an English atheist club. On his death bed said this, "You need not tell me there is no God, for I know that there is one, and I am in His presence. You need not tell me that there is no hell. I feel myself already slipping, wrenches cease your idle talk about there being any hope for me. I know I am lost forever. Oh that fire the insufferable pangs of Hell." That's how he died.

"Fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." That's what the text is talking about.

Voltaire that great mocker, French enlightenment philosopher. The end of his life said this, "I am abandoned by God and man." And he said to his doctor, Dr. Fu-shin who was ministering to him, he said, "I would give you half of what I'm told I'm worth, if you would just extend my life by six months." The doctor told him it was impossible. He said, "Then I shall die and go to hell." And his nurse, who was caring for him after he died said this, "For all the money in Europe I wouldn't want to see another unbeliever, die all night long he cried out for forgiveness."

But on the other hand there is the atheist Thomas Edison whose final words were, "It's very beautiful over there." Truly God is a God who hides Himself, it's not always the same. But the text does say, it seems in some cases that people have a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. And there's a physical description of it here, it's consistent. So consistent biblical expression; fire. It's always fire, it's always fire. The lake of fire. Beware of people who tell you? It's just a metaphor, I don't know what that means, a metaphor of what. Something lighter something easier, something better? No, it's better to be burned with physical fire than to go to hell. It's better. So it's a metaphor expression or an analogy of something worse than the thing you think of when you think of that word.

A Punishment Worse Than Death

But it's not annihilation either, you're not consumed in that sense. I don't believe in that doctrine. The worm does not die. There is a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked, and so in some mysterious way the physical body is sustained and supported throughout all eternity. It's a terrifying thing. The text in effect calls it a punishment worse than death. And the author uses a, how much more argument. Look at verses 28 and 29, "Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses." How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished, who has trampled the Son of God under foot…?"

So he's using a "How much more" argument, comparing two things and say that this is true. And how much more would that be true? Now, throughout the book of Hebrews, we have been celebrating the superiority of the New Covenant to the old, it's greater, it's better, it's a clearer revelation of the glory of God. The new covenant, the gospel of Jesus Christ is a clearer, brighter, better revelation of God than the Old Covenant was. It's better in every way. And the biblical mentality in judgment is the more you know the more you're accountable for, you see, that's how it works, the more you know, the more you're accountable for. And so I do not believe in equality of punishment in the end. Someone who's never heard of the Gospel is in a different place than someone who has heard for years and rejected, and just in different place. And so the argument here is, now that we have received the new covenant instruction, it is a much worse thing to turn away from the New Covenant than it ever was to turn away from the old covenant. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punish? There's a sense of justice here. And the punishment in the Old Covenant's right in the text was death, right? Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy.

And so therefore, this has got to be worse, and it is. Jesus said, "Do not fear those who kill the body and after that they can do nothing more to you, but I tell you the one to fear, fear the one who after the death of body has the power to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." Those are Jesus's own words. So there's a punishment worse than death. Now the roots of God's wrath in the text, God's holy character and His sovereign position, His holy character comes from the statement, "For we know Him who said..." What do we know about him? He's a God who does not speak in idle word you see. He doesn't speak an idle word, he doesn't give an idle promise and not, neither does He give an idle threat or warning. What God has said he will do. And so, we know Him, who said this, We know his character, he is the God who upholds His word.

And it also says He is living. Look at Verse 31, "It's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." It's a common title in the Old Testament to call God the living God. The reason is there He was being compared to the false gods of the nations, they weren't alive, they didn't exist. Like Baal on Mount Carmel, "Oh Baal hear us." Well, he couldn't hear because he doesn't exist. But Yahweh, now he's the living God, he actually is alive, He is real whether you believe in him or not, he is the living God. And so therefore, these are not idle warnings, these are not idle threats. He is alive, He rules, He reigns. There will be a judgment day.

Vengeance Belongs to the Lord

He is truthful, and He is alive, that's His character. What of his position? Well, the text says, "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay." "Vengeance is mine." In other words, it is right for me to take revenge on my enemies. It is just for me because that is my position, I am the judge of all the earth, it is right for me to do this. Vengeance belongs to me. Now, this is quoted in Romans 12, but it's much more of a human horizontal aspect. That we will not repay our enemies with unkindness, we will be, we'll pray for them, we'll deal well with them, we will not take revenge, because it's not our place. Vengeance belongs to God, it's not our place to take revenge. 

Well, that's the human aspect. Here in Hebrews 10, it's really totally about God and saying, this is God's position, it's right, it's his office and he will execute it, He will take vengeance. And the sense of vengeance is, you know, when you think of vengeance, somebody wants to take revenge, some grievous affront or assault has been done by person B on person A, and person A wants to take revenge for that. It's because something serious has happened. Taking revenge. Something serious here has happened. The Son of God has been trampled under foot, you see. The spirit of grace has been insulted? This is not a minor thing, the gospel has been rejected. And so that's the root of God's wrath.

Now, when does God display this wrath? Well, the root cause of course is sin. Look at verse 26, "If we deliberately keep on sinning…" Of course, the wrath of God is produced by sin, it is sin that brings on this wrath. But Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for any sin. We've learned that.

The blood of Christ is infinitely adequate and sufficient for any sin. This seems to be in some way and unpardonable sin, how can it be that Christ's blood is not availed for this situation? Well, the text tells us, in effect, God pours out his wrath when there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. Well, that's what the text tells us, it's when there's no longer any sacrifice for sin. Well, when is that, when is it that there's no longer any sacrifice for sin? We knew that the blood of animals, the blood of bulls and goats never took away sin, never. It was never effective for that. And besides which it is now obsolete, so it can't refer to that. Well, I think the text tells us what we're talking about. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses, you see, died without mercy.

So these are people who in some way, reject the new covenant the way that these folks rejected the Old Covenant. Now, there were lots of death penalties set up in the Old Testament in the old covenant under the Law of Moses. You died, you could die for adultery, you could die for murder, etcetera, but there was a special phraseology for people who ran after other gods and incite others to do it. And so, in Deuteronomy 13 it says, "If you're very own brother or your son, or daughter, or the wife you love or your closest friend, secretly entices you saying, 'let us go and worship other gods,' gods that neither you nor your fathers have known gods of the people around you, whether near or far from one end of the land to the other, do not yield to him or listen to him, show him no pity, do not spare him or shield him." And so it says, and in our text anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without pity, without mercy.

I think that's what it's talking about here. It's somebody that turns their backs on God and runs after another religion basically another god, they die without mercy. And even the husband or the wife or the brother of the friend must be the first to act in putting them to death. That's how serious this was.

Okay, well for what people then, is there no longer a sacrifice? What does it say about them? Well, who are they now? Well, they go on willfully sinning. Again in verse 26, "If we deliberately keep on sinning, after we've received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left." This is a habitual commitment to sin. This is a determined commitment to sin, this is not an accidental commitment, this is not something that happens. Like the Puritans called it surprisal. You know what I'm talking about, where you going along and then suddenly a temptation hits you and down you go. That's called a surprisal. We're not... This text isn't referring to that.

And I don't think it's referring to that struggle with the flesh, that all of us has again and again, although more on that later, I'll talk about that more later. If I can just say pause, anything that gives you confidence in indulging the sins of the flesh, is the enemy of your soul, and I think a journey to apostasy. We'll get back to that later. I'm not giving you permission to sin and indulge the flesh because this text isn't talking about that. End of warning.

But this text is talking about the deliberate commitment in a certain direction in a certain way. That's what it's talking about here. Matthew Henry said this, "This text has been the occasion of great distress to some gracious, that is genuinely converted souls. They have been ready to conclude that every willful sin after conversion and against the knowledge of the gospel is this unpardonable sin." You can't live your Christian life that way friends. We all stumble in many ways. And if you're going as soon as you stumble, you run to this text and you cry out against your soul, saying, "I am lost and I can never be redeemed. That's not the way to fight the battle, you already told in Hebrews 4, go to the throne of grace, receive mercy and grace to cleanse you, cleanse your guilty conscience, that's what sanctification is all about sanctification, not for perfect people, it for sinners. Matthew Henry says, "This has been their infirmity and error." That's not what this text is talking about. The sin here mentioned is a total and final apostasy when men with a full and fixed will and resolution despised and reject Christ himself.

That's not the way I sin and it's not the way you sin, right? I sin, and grieve Christ and it grieves me very quickly, you see. I want Jesus to love my life, I want Him to be pleased with me and when I know I've sinned against Him, it immediately grieve me and I want to run back to him.

Deliberate Rejection of Christ

This is talking about something else. It is a deliberate commitment, a long-standing pattern of sin a rejection of Christ and of everything he stands for. The text also calls them enemies, they are enemies. Look at verse 27, "A fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." Oh, what a dreadful thing this must be to have Almighty God as your enemy. I can't even ponder what that must be like, to have His omnipotence directed toward the destruction of your soul for all eternity. Like some kind of focus laser beam heating you up forever and ever. It's a terrifying thing to have omnipotence and omnipresence and omniscience directed against you, because you are the enemy of God.

And thirdly, it says of them, that they trample the Son of God under foot. This is a total despising of Christ. How much more severely, verse 29, do you think a man deserves to be punished, who has trampled the Son of God under foot? There's a movie about Mozart called Amadeus, I watched a number of years ago, and in the movie the enemy of Mozart is this Italian composer named Salieri, and he admires Mozart's compositions, but hates his moral character, and feels himself morally superior to Mozart but clearly musically inferior, and it makes him angry at God. And his feelings of jealousy just keep driving him further and further, but he keeps them hidden because they're shameful, I think. And so no one knows about it, but he is deeply jealous of Mozart.

At one point, Mozart's wife comes and brings a bunch of Mozart's compositions which are originals, have never been published or even played yet. He was just working on them, his music. Brought them to Salieri for him to use, Salieri to uses his influence to get a position, a paying position for her husband Mozart at the court. And so she shows him the music and he looks at it and he's being friendly to her, and all that, and he said, "Just leave it with me." And he says... She says, "I can't leave it, these are originals and he'll miss them, he'll want them back, you have to look at them right now." He said, "Now these are original, there's no other copies?" That's it. So he opens up and he starts looking. There's not a single mark or blemish on the page, everything like taking dictation from heaven. And the music was unbelievably beautiful. He could hear it in his mind, he is a composer himself, and he could just hear piece after piece after piece how beautiful it was, until finally, he's just overcome with both the ecstasy of the music and the rage toward God for giving this gift to such an immoral person, that he just is blimp, and he drops the music all over the floor, and Mozart's wife is stunned, and says, "Is it not any good?" And he looks at her and says, "Madam, it's miraculous." "Oh, then you'll help us?" And he just glares at her with a cold, icy glare and walks on the music, and walks out.

Now, what is the significance of stepping on the music? He was really stepping on Mozart himself, right on his neck, you see. Right on his neck, stepping right on his face, it's total rejection. And that's what's going on in this text here, stepping on Jesus, trampling Jesus underfoot.

Do you see what we're talking about here? That's not what happens when a Christian indulges the sin of the flesh, this is somebody who now hates Jesus. When we were missionaries in Japan, we visited a site of some martyrs, Christian martyrs under the Shogunate, these Japanese Christians were forced to step on a picture of Jesus and anyone who would step on the picture of Jesus, they reason wasn't a Christian. And so that in that way were test... They were tested. These were Catholic... Christians who had been led to the Catholic faith through Jesuit missionaries. And it really was a fork in the road to trample on this picture meant you're not a Christian, you could save your life. But if they refused to do it, they would be slowly burned to death.

Now, that's an extreme example obviously, but these people are in some metaphorical way trampling on Jesus, they are trampling the Son of God under foot. It says also that they treat as a common thing, the blood of Jesus. Now, what do we mean by that? The NIV gives us treating as an unholy thing, but I don't think that's a good translation. It just means common. Jesus's blood is common, it's just like yours and mine. He was crucified with two other men. There's no difference between the blood of Jesus and that of the two thieves that were killed with him that day. This is the way an atheist will reason, Jesus was a good moral man, his blood was shed, he was a victim of political crime, and then He died a bloody death, and there's nothing special about the blood of Jesus at all.

But we have found out that the blood of Jesus is the most precious substance there has ever been on earth by the blood of Jesus, my sins are forgiven, the wrath of God averted. But this individual doesn't think so anymore. It may they relate also to the Lord's Supper, how we sit down and we eat the bread, and we drink the cup, and it's symbolic of the blood of the New Covenant. This is the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. But these folks have drunk of that. They've partaken in the Christian life in the church life, but now they're trampling it under foot and they're treating it as though it were a common thing, it's nothing.

And then finally it says, "They have insulted the spirit of grace." The Holy Spirit is entrusted with the glorious task of taking the finished work of Jesus Christ and applying it to people all over the world. And so He moves out, and by the Spirit, He moves in missionaries and evangelists. And at that time, it says in Hebrews 2:4, "God testified to it by signs, and wonders, and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will." And so this is the lavish display of the Spirit of God and these folks have insulted the spirit of grace. They've insulted it, and I find it fascinating.

John Owen brought this idea to my mind and he said, "Talk about Ananias and Sapphira? You remember what happened to them, how they sold a piece of property and then they lied about it and they were struck dead?" And it says, Peter said, "You have not lied... You have lied to the Holy Spirit." He specifically says you lied to the spirit. John Owen said this, "If lying to the Holy Spirit is so great a sin, then what is it to make the Holy Spirit a liar?" Greater, friends, greater sin. That the Spirit, as He has testified to Jesus Christ, is a liar. Jesus is not the only way. Well, that's what they are now. That's what these people are now.

What Were They Then?

What were they before? This is where it gets painful. Well, they received the knowledge of the truth. If we deliberately keep on sending after we have received the knowledge of the truth. Now, what does that mean? They've heard the gospel. They've heard doctrine. They've heard good instruction. They've heard good preaching and teaching. They have not only heard it but in some sense, received it, maybe they once received it with joy, like in the parable of the rocky soil, and all that. They have taken it in, they've run with it for a little while. They've received a knowledge of the truth, they're not ignorant of the Gospel. This text has nothing to do about those who've not heard of Jesus. These people have heard.

And secondly, it says that they are His people, God's people. And says The Lord will judge his people. Why did the author bring that text in? Because it's relevant. These were in some sense, His people. Well, in what sense were they his people? Well, in the same sense, the Jews as a nation in the Old Testament were God's people. They were under the name of Yahweh. They had come out under the miracles and with Moses through the Red Sea. They were Yahweh's people and so therefore, God had married his name to them as a nation, His reputation to them.

Well, whatever you can say about that in the Old Testament and just because you were a Jew, didn't mean you were going to heaven. Lots of those people died under the judgment of God, but they were God's people in a big sense. So we now say about the church. We are Jesus's people in the world. The church is. We meet every Sunday. We come together under the name of Jesus Christ. We hear this gospel. We are God's people in that sense. Publicly, openly, Jesus has united his name to the church in the world. And what else does it say about them? Well, they were sanctified. Now it gets really hard. This is the joy of verse-by-verse exposition. It would be nice to skip the word, but we can't. It says that they treat it as an unholy or a common thing. The blood of the covenant that sanctified him. But what does that mean? How do we understand this word? How do we understand what's happening here?

Well, there are three possible options. Maybe more, but there's at least three. Option number one. It is possible for someone who is genuinely regenerate, justified to lose their salvation and end up in hell. That's how some people argue, and they say this text is plain. A plain example of those who were in that condition, they were justified, and they end up under the wrath of God through their own sins. It's even harder when you look at verse 14, in the same chapter, look at 10:14. It says, "For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time, those who are being sanctified." So these people are perfected. What does it say "for all time?" Well, that doesn't fit. How can you be both "perfected for all time," and then later "under the judgment of God?" That doesn't line up? So what do we do with that?  Well, this is what we do with it. We already learned in Hebrews 3:14 that truly justified people show that they're truly justified by running the race to the very end. That's how they show it. And so it says in Hebrews 3:14, "We have come to share in Christ," past tense, "if we hold firmly to the end, the confidence we had at first." In other words, if you run to the finish line, then you are truly justified. I tell you, there is no one who is genuinely justified who will not finish the race. None of them drop out. And so therefore, I reject this first option. I think it overturned so many clear teachings of scripture. You can't be genuinely justified and God later changes his mind and say, "I didn't know this was going to happen."

A second option is, this is merely a hypothetical case. This isn't true of anybody but the author wrote it. Does this sound hypothetical to you as you read it? Does it come across that way? Or do you have a sense that this is actively truly happening with some people? I don't think this is a good answer either.

More likely, I think the word sanctified here in this verse, in verse 29, means something different than it did in verse 14. The author uses the word in a different way. Okay, I think in verse 14, it's talking about an inward work of God's sovereign grace by the Holy Spirit in which He changes you from within, so that His laws are written in your minds and in your heart. It's called the taking out of the heart of stone in the giving of the heart of flesh, and he has perfected you, and then he begins to transform your whole life and you're living a holy life now by the power of the spirit walking in the pattern of God's laws. That's sanctified in verse 14.

In verse 29. I think it has to do with being set apart from the world, as special unto God. And as I already told you, that will happen if you come and hang out with Christians for a while. In some outward ways celebrate the Word of God. Fool a pastor into baptizing you. And then live generally okay for a while until things start to fall apart. You see what I'm saying? And for that while, you were set apart from the world, under the ministrations of the Gospel, under the ministrations of the Lord's supper and the baptism and the preaching of the Word and the spiritual gifts and all that stuff's going on. But now you have turned your back on it. This individual has said no to Jesus, rejecting aggressively. This is apostasy. That's what's going on here as John tells us in 1st John. They went out from us, because they were never really of us. Is it possible to fool a pastor? Oh yeah, yeah. I shudder sometimes to think of the percentage of people I baptized, water baptized, that will not end up in Heaven. It's a terrifying thing, to go to hell. I don't know who they are. I wouldn't have baptized them had I thought they would be like that. You remember that the 11 apostles thought Judas was going out to buy supplies for the feast. They were wrong about Judas. It's easy to fool people.

So the real warning here is for us. Test yourselves to see if you really are in the faith. Is it a genuine work of grace that's been done in your life. Are you genuinely resting on the promises of God? That's what this text does to me. I read this warning and I just say, "I've got to take this warning and take it seriously. I need to be terrified of sin. I need to live a life of total dependence on Jesus, away with any independent salvation here." This text makes me run and cling to Jesus more. You see what I'm saying? If you're ever thinking like this. Well, because of this doctrine, I know that I can sin and still be saved from apostasy. Woe to you, if you think like that. I warn you not to think like that, anything that gives you the sense that it's okay to sin is from the devil. It's not okay to sin.

You're not safe in sin. Sin is never safe. And as I've said before, I think every sin, even of the flesh, even those surprises and all of those assaults, they tend toward apostasy. Do you know what I'm saying? That's where they're heading. They would lead you there if they could. And so, what causes you, when you're starting to indulge in sin of the flesh and that you don't really do a thorough work in your heart. And then you do it again, and pretty soon it's a habit and then you're starting to drift. But you are genuinely born again, genuinely justified. What is it that gets you to turn around this text and others? It warns you. Don't go that way. And you know who heeds these texts? The truly regenerate, the elect, they heed them. You know who doesn't? Those that aren't. They just keep on going in the same direction. And so be terrified of sin. Don't be comfortable in it. And I guess what I would say to you, I need to be so careful here, but I have to preach the text as is. I know there are sensitive souls among you. I've talked to some of you who struggle with assurance. You struggle, struggle, struggle, with assurance and for you, you may think this is the last term and I needed to hear today.

Well, know you're here, providence of God. God wanted you hear this sermon. You need to have a healthier assurance. Get your assurance healthy. Justified by faith alone, look to Christ, trust in Him. Spirit works in you, you follow by the ways of the law. When you sin, you come back to the throne of grace and you ask forgiveness. That's the Christian life. I said it on Thursday, Men's Bible study, to have two things side by side, this is health for your soul. Complete total assurance that all of your sins are forgiven through the finished work of Christ on the cross, plus a settled determination to fight sin with every fiber of your being by the power of the Spirit. Those two things together, you're healthy. If you only have one of the two you are decidedly unhealthy. If you only have the determination to fight sin, but not that settled assurance of the finished work of Christ enough for you, you're going to be a legalist. You're going to try to earn your salvation by works of the law. If, on the other hand, all you have is that "once saved, always saved" doctrine, you're not fighting sin, then it's a licensed for you all the time.

Hold them together. And understand and weigh the danger of apostasy. This is a serious thing. Don't take it lightly as though you're reading someone else's mail today. Assume that God brought you here to hear this message and look after your souls. Look after your souls. Meditate on the terrors of hell, the seriousness of what we're talking about. And look back one passage to Hebrews 10:19 through 26, to get some clear applications. Just read through it this afternoon, Hebrews 10 19 and following. Daily esteemed the greatness of Christ provision for you, think about that. Nurture your confidence. Full assurance of faith, be in the word. Feed your soul on the word so that your confidence is strong. Draw near to God in prayer and worship, and in your thought life, your daily life. Draw near to Him. Protect the sincerity of your heart. Don't violate your conscience. Don't willfully sin against your conscience, but when your conscience has been violated, quickly allow the blood of Jesus to cleanse it, and to restore you back in a walk with Jesus. Live a clean lifestyle. Your body washed with pure water. Feed your hope in the future glory. Feed on that. And stay actively involved in a good church.

Don't think, hey, I'm not like the others. I'll be fine going to church, 20% of the time. Warning. Danger. For able-bodied you need to be there. So, stay actively involved in a good church and receive and give encouragement. Encourage and be encouraged. Feed on that and keep focusing on the coming judgment day. And finally, let's together, as primarily entrusted as leaders to the elders to be under-shepherds. But let's look for straying sheep shall we? Look around at your home fellowship. See who's not there. Look around at your Bible for Life class, see who's not there. Look around at Sunday morning worship, see who's not there. Let's go look for those that are wandering and drifting, and struggling. Because it could be that this process is begun. And then through tenderness, warnings, love, promises, bring them back. Close with me in prayer.

Well, I'm sure all of you that are old enough to remember the events of 10 years ago today are thinking about it, have been thinking this week. I know I have. I will never forget that day. I remember hearing as I was driving to church that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I had pictured a little two-seater or something like that hitting a radio antenna at the top. I hoped that the person would survive, although I thought if we're hearing about it, probably they didn't. Those are my thoughts. It wasn't until we got here that we realized the magnitude of what happened. And I think the one image that sticks in my mind from that dreadful morning was the tower is literally coming down. That's the thing that sticks with me still. And as I was watching on YouTube this week, just clips from that day, a just horrifying moment for people, people crying out, "Oh my God, my God, my God," running, that kind of thing and just facing death, you know, mortality, facing that.

The fact that, as I just prayed a moment ago, all of the achievements of our hands, are there's nothing. Those towers just seemed to melt to me. That's the word, the verb, I just give you, is they just melted. They just disappeared that quickly. Now it's been 10 years. And, you know, I think about those 10 years, and it's so many thoughts in my mind. One of the things is just the brevity of life. That's 10 years of my life and yours. And for me, that's good. I've been thinking good thoughts about that. I'm 10 years closer to heaven, 10 years of futile attack by Satan against my soul. Amen, hallelujah. For 10 years, he's been trying to get me to turn away from Jesus and he's failed. To God be the glory for that. I'm still a Christian 10 years later. So are you. And to God be the glory. And if you're taking credit for that, then get back in the word and realize it isn't you, but you've been held with a mighty hand now for 10 years. Praise God for that. Time goes by quickly. Our lives are brief.

And thank you Janet and Lin for that testimony. It's just we are here for that. We're here for labor and for good works. We're going to talk about that in the text today. This is why God left us here. And so, let's redeem the time. Let's get the word out. God is not frustrated. He's not thwarted. He's on his throne. The kingdom is advancing.

I mean it may feel just as you look at one level politically or militarily that terrorism is every bit as much a threat as it was then. What have we achieved in 10 years? But I just look at things differently, and I just think the issue is the advance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Has God been failing for 10 years? No, he has not. And think of all the thousands, tens of thousands of new brothers and sisters that have come into the kingdom in that time. So to God be the glory. And I can think of no better book than the Bible to be studying with you now in the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks than the Book of Hebrews. We already saw in a message I preached recently from Hebrews 12, we're receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The earth can shake. Everything here is temporary. But we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

And so, rejoice in that while we are so reminded, like Paul said, sorrowful yet always rejoicing. We know that we've been given this kingdom that cannot be shaken. And so, as we look at Hebrews 10 today, verses 19-25, we come to an important kind of fork in the road or turning point in the Book of Hebrews. The author has been telling us the glories of the New Covenant, the glories of the achievement of Jesus Christ on the cross. He's been making that clear. He summarizes that again briefly in this text. But now he turns and says, "Okay, if we have all of these gospel riches, what kind of lives should we live?" And, by the way, this is a common pattern in the New Testament. Again and again, you see this in the Epistles how the author, usually Paul, will lay out doctrine and then at some point say, "Okay, how then shall we live? What kind of lives ought we to live in view of these truths, in view of these mercies of God?" Or, "How should we live our lives in that all of these doctrinal things are true?"

And so There's basically a two-part outline to the message of the text today what it is that Christ has given us and what is Christ commanding us to do. And so the author just quickly lists a catalogue of blessings that we have been covering in detail up to this point in the Book of Hebrews. And then, he turns and starts using... Five times he uses this expression, "Let us. Let us do this. Let us do that," etcetera. And that's a five part outline of the second half of the message. And so, we're going to be looking this morning at what Christ has given us, and that really by way of review, and then we're going to turn and ask, "Okay, what kind of lives should we live?"

And so the author starts in Verse 19 and following. It says, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God." So the first thing that I want to tell you that Christ has given us is he has given us his body and his blood. He's given us his flesh. Literally in the Greek, it says flesh in Verse 20. He has given us his flesh. And in Verse 19, the blood of Jesus mentioned again. And so, we have again a mention of the actual physical nature of the gift of Jesus Christ. He gave everything he had.

Earlier in Chapter 10 we saw sacrifice and offering. God did not desire, but a body he prepared for Jesus and that Jesus has shed his blood. The blood of bulls and goats and animals cannot, it is impossible for them to take away sin. And so, God ordained that the blood, the precious blood of his own son, would avail for us. And so we have the body and the blood of Jesus, and this points also to the priestly ministry of Jesus. Jesus is there as our great priest over the house of God it says, pleading the merits of his achievement for us. And so we have that once for all sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus and we have that ongoing priestly ministry of Jesus at the right hand of God, and he is there as a great priest over the house of God, a picture of Jesus's authority. He is reigning and ruling over the house of God, and we are that house we were told earlier.

And so here is the picture of sovereign Jesus our great priest, and he's there at the right hand of God. As we have talked about earlier, he is interceding for us. So these are things that we have. And from that we have a perfect atonement. We have a perfect atonement. If you go ahead to Verse 22, it says, "Having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, and having our bodies washed with pure water." The giving of the body and the blood of Jesus is sufficient for the atoning of our sins. Jesus said mysteriously, but to us I think it's clear, in John 6, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day, for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink."

A complete mystery to the people who heard him the first day he spoke it. But now we understand the giving of the flesh and the blood of Jesus was for atonement, his death on the cross sufficient for us. And so we have a perfect standing with God. As we just sang in that beautiful hymn before the throne, we have a perfect standing with God, all of our sins forgiven. And we have a cleansed conscience. Our consciences are cleansed by the blood of Jesus. We have a perfect atonement. We can't have any better standing. It's impossible for us to have a better standing with God than we do in Jesus. These are gifts of grace that God has given, and it speaks there of "having our bodies washed with pure water."

Different ways of interpreting that. What is it referring to? Some go back to the Old Covenant where Aaron and his sons in Exodus 29:4 were brought to the entrance of the tent of meeting and it was commanded that they should be washed with pure water, the implication that they had to be cleansed from their sins before they were fit to enter into the presence of God. So that's a symbolic picture, that cleansing of Aaron and his sons, to enable them to come into God's presence. Maybe the author was picking up on that. Others say it's referring to Christian baptism, water baptism.

And so we have in 1 Peter 3:21, "This water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also, not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God." And that's fine too, but I think for me, it just goes to the issue of what it is the atoning sacrifice of Jesus accomplishes for me, the cleansing, the purifying of my life, my standing inside and out, the purifying of my heart, the cleansing of my life by the atoning work of Christ. And so we have in Ephesians 5, for example, husbands are to love their wives "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any kind of blemish, but holy and blameless."

So that's the washing with pure water that I see here is the work of Jesus Christ on his bride, the church, cleansing us and making us holy where it says in Titus 3:5 that he saved us not because of any good works that we have done, but because of his own grace. He saved us by the washing of rebirth and renewal in the Holy Spirit. And so there's no physical water here, but it's just a symbol. We know that water cleanses, and so the work of the Holy Spirit on us in regeneration cleanses us and makes us fit to stand in the presence of God. Perhaps the best text of all is in the Old Covenant in Ezekiel where the Old Covenant promises very much like Jeremiah are given. And again, we have this washing and this cleansing with water.

Ezekiel 36, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all of your impurities and from all of your idols. I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you and I will remove from you your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit in you and I will move you to follow my decrees and obey my laws." Oh, that's the New Covenant work, isn't it? And at the beginning of all those words were a cleansing, the washing with water through the Spirit. All of those are fine. I think it's pointed to the cleansing that we have. We have a perfect atonement in every way. God is perfectly at peace with you if you're a Christian. We have peace with God, and we have been cleansed both inside and out.

And we ought to meditate much on that internal cleansing. That heart of stone has been taken out now and we have a heart of flesh. We have the mind of Christ. And what that means is our allegiance to and our affection for sin has been severed forever. We owe it nothing and we don't love it. We hate it and we want it gone, Amen? Oh, how we yearn to be clean and pure from all sin. It is the enemy of our souls. We want to be free from it, and we have been positionally set apart from sin. We have been once for all sanctified from it and made holy unto God, and we have been cleansed in every way. But also, there's an implication of what kind of life we are to live.

Our bodies washed with pure water implies what kind of life you're living. You know in Romans 12 it says we're to present our bodies as living sacrifices, and the body is the vehicle of action. And so, having our bodies washed with pure water to me speaks of a sanctified lifestyle, a purified life where we are actually walking as Jesus walked in this world. We are following by the power of the Spirit his laws, his commandments, and obeying them. So we have this as well. We also have, thirdly, access to God's holy dwelling place. It speaks in Verse 20 of a new and living way opened for us through the curtain that is his body. Now, friends, I have plundered this text for months now.

And so it's kind of... You may think it's kind of used up. It's never used up. But I've been going ahead to Hebrews 10 and talking about this, venturing through the living way into the presence of God. But now we're at the text. And so, I'll just mention again by way of review. You know that human beings, the Jews, were forbidden from entering into the most holy place universally, every single Jew forbidden except one man, the high priest, and that only one day a year. He was forbidden from entering into the holy presence of God. But the moment that Jesus died when the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, there was physically symbolized there an opening, an access into the presence of God. And this text tells us what it is: By the body of Jesus, by the flesh of Jesus given on the cross, we have an access. We have a new and living way into the presence of this Holy God. And what's amazing here, we have the right to be there.

We have the legal right to be in the presence of a holy God. It says in Romans 5:1-2, "Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and we have access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." You have the legal right to be there, dear brother and sister in Christ. But this text goes beyond that. You have the moral obligation to be there. You are actually commanded to come into the presence of God. We'll get to that in a moment, but this text goes beyond just that we have the right and the privilege. You're actually now under a moral obligation to be close to God, that by the blood of Jesus, you have this new and living way opened for us. And one more gift he gives us. He gives us boldness or confidence to be there, and what a beautiful gift that is.

"It was grace that taught my heart to fear and it was grace my fears relieved." And so, we don't tremble like those in bondage to sin, trembling that we are about to be condemned by the justice and the wrath of God. But in Verse 19, it says, "We have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus." What is the nature of this? A better translation may be "boldness." Why does it take boldness to enter into the presence of a holy God? We'll just have to read the Bible and know the answer to that one. He is the thrice Holy God who sits on a holy throne. A throne in Daniel 7, this picture is a throne of fire on wheels of fire and a river of fire flowing out from before him. Our God is a consuming fire, all of this fire language speaking of the justice of God and the holiness and the purity of God.

At the very least we would say it's illegal in the Old Covenant for us to be there, and we would come under the death penalty if we ventured into the most holy place and we weren't the high priest and it wasn't the day of atonement. But this goes far beyond that. It just has to do with the character of God, God's perfect holiness. He will lash out against wickedness and evil, and we are evil, and we are wicked apart from Jesus. Jesus said it. It's not the pastor saying, "Oh, here we are again another statement about our wickedness." Jesus said it when he was talking about prayer and about fathers being generous to their children and said, "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…"

So we were. But it's not who we are anymore. We have been transformed. And so we now have, because of the blood of Jesus, a boldness and a confidence given us by the Holy Spirit. You have the right to be there. You need to be there. You need to be close to God. We'll get to that in a minute. But you have boldness and confidence to come right into the presence of God.

So, this is what Christ has given us. This is a brief catalogue. If you want the full list, then read the entire New Testament. Amen? Read it all, all of the blessings that are ours in Jesus. This is a very short list, but we have the body and blood of Jesus. We have a perfect atonement. We have access into the presence of God, and he's given us through the Holy Spirit boldness and confidence to be there. Alright, how then shall we live?

And so we turn a corner now in the Book of Hebrews: "Since we have all these things, let us, let us, let us," five times it tells us what we must do. And the first thing that we must do is draw near to God. Now, I've already talked about this a moment ago.

We are commanded to draw near to God in this text. Verse 22, "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." First and foremost, the best application of this is come to Jesus for salvation.

Perhaps you were invited here yesterday from the health fair. Perhaps you wandered in off the street. Perhaps you're sitting next to the person who invited you, and you know you're outside of Christ. You know you're not a Christian. You've never made a commitment to Christ. Your conscience testifies that you're not a Christian. You're lost. But this text tells you what to do. Draw near to God by faith in Jesus. Accept his cleansing, the cleansing work of Jesus. Don't leave this place in an unregenerate state. Don't leave this place with God as your enemy.

Rather as your adopted father. Let him adopt you as a son and daughter of the living God. Draw near to God by faith. Come to Christ. Trust in him. Well, you could say that this text is written to Christians. Is there no application for me? What if I've already come to Christ. Well, come to him again. Draw near to him again. Have you never felt distant from God as a Christian? This text urges you as a believer to draw near to God. And so here we get to this great gift, this command, but also the gift of intimacy with God here and now. I'm not talking about a heavenly blessing. This is not talking about heaven. It's a command now, that here and now while we are in the body, before we die, that we should live very close to God, that we should draw near to God. Now, how do I know that? Well, it says in full assurance of faith.

Friends, you don't need that in heaven. There's no need for faith in heaven. What is faith? We'll learn about it in a few weeks. In Hebrews 11:1, "Faith is the assurance of" what? "Of things hoped for." But Romans 8 tells us we don't hope for what we already have. You won't be hoping in heaven. You'll have all your hopes realized in heaven and it's the conviction of things not seen. Well, this will not be one of the things not seen in heaven. You will see God's face. You will be in his presence in heaven. No, this is for right here and right now that you should receive through the Spirit that deposit guaranteeing your full inheritance.

Give me a bigger stipend check, Father. I want more of foretaste of heaven. I want to be close to you. I want to have a sense of intimacy with you. I want to walk in the light of God every day. I want to be in his presence. It's what old mystics call practicing the presence of the Lord, that kind of thing. It's what it was said of Enoch and Noah that they walked with God. Enoch walked with God and then he was no more, for God took him away. And Noah walked with God. Abraham walked with God. Let us walk with God. Walk implies an everyday life, just whatever you're doing, your chores, your errands, as you're driving in the car, as you're doing housework or work out in the yard, as you're at your work, your employment during the week, you're going to be with Jesus. You're going to be close to God. Let us draw near to God.

This is the greatest earthly gift God could give you, a sense, an immediate sense of his presence in your life. He's here with you now in manual, God with us. He is with you now and he loves you and he will help you and he will protect you, and you're commanded here to draw near to him. It's what the psalmist found in Psalm 73, this great, great blessing. You remember Psalm 73 where the psalmist is complaining about the prosperity of the wicked and he's frustrated about how well the wicked people do and he wishes he could have some of that, some of that material blessing, some of all that physical health. It seems their bodies are always strong and everything goes well for them all the time, and they're wicked, lawless people.

And the psalmist essentially says, "Everything was frustrating to me and I almost stumbled away from a healthy faith in God until I entered the temple and realized their final end and what it is they're going to get because God puts them in slippery places. And at some point, the judgment of God catches up with them." But then he says so beautifully at the end of the psalm, "My heart was grieved and my spirit embittered. I was senseless and ignorant. I was like a brute beast before you." I have days like that. I have times in which through unbelief, through sin, I act like an animal. "Yet I'm always with you. You guide me by my right hand. You guide me and help me with your counsel, and afterward, you will take me into glory. Whom have I in Heaven but you and Earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Those who are far from you will perish. You destroy all who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, it is good to be near God."

Well, that's what we're talking about here in this text. Let us draw near to God. Don't stay away. Satan is constantly assaulting your souls with temptation to keep you in some sense distant from God. You feel like you don't deserve to come closer. You will never deserve to come closer, has nothing to do with what you deserve. Do you realize you have no better standing on your own merits, on your most obedient day of your life, to stand close to this holy God than you do on the most disobedient day of your Christian life? You have equal standing in and of yourself and that is zero. But in Christ, you have the right and are commanded to draw near, to come close. Sins damage your assurance. They damage your boldness and confidence. But they do not damage your standing before our Holy God.

And so make intimacy with God your top priority every day. Start your day with a quiet time. Be in the word and make a central goal of your quiet time a sense of the presence of God in your life, a sense of his love for you, that he loves you in Jesus. Pursue it and don't wait, don't stop until you get it. Develop a hunger and a thirst. Like in Psalm 63, "My soul yearns for you. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty for you. I was in a dry and weary land where there's no water. I'm thirsting for the living God. When can I be near God?" That should be the sound of your quiet time every day, God's mercies new every morning. He feels you up then with a sense of your standing in Christ and how much he loves you.

And if you've sinned, there is no other place to go. Bring the sin with you. Bring it in. Confess it to God and give it to him and let him plunge it into the sea, the ocean of grace. Hebrews 4:16, "Let us draw near to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

Secondly, Let us hold unswervingly to the hope. "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." Now, what do I mean by hope? Hope is a sense of certainty based on the promises of God that the future is gloriously bright. It's going to be good, really good. And it gets really specific. Alright, well, what's there going to be in the future? Well, there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth, a home of righteousness. It's going to be beautiful. They'll be no sin there. There's going to be this majestic glorious city, the new Jerusalem coming down as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

It will be irradiated through and through with the glory of God through Jesus Christ. The colors, the beauties are scarcely describable, and there's going to be a banquet table with your name at a certain place if you're a child of God, and you're going to sit down there at the banquet table. I don't know if you'll sit at the right or the left, but Jesus said that that's whoever God's got that place ready for it. But he's got a place for you. If you're a child of God, you will sit at banquet table with Jesus and you'll feast and you'll be there with a multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation that have been redeemed just as you are.

This is hope. I'm speaking the language of hope right now, the blessings of the future, a glorious future, and the author has already talked about this. In Hebrew 6, he calls it this hope and anchored for the soul that goes in behind the veil and anchors us to Jesus. And in both texts, both in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10, it tells us to hold firmly to that anchor, hold onto that hope that we profess. Hold onto it. Believe that these things are going to come. And the basis of our confidence is the character of God. Is it possible for God to make a promise like this to your soul and not keep it?

It says in Hebrews 6 God does not lie. He cannot lie. These are unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. He has made these promises to us. So I guess all I'm asking you to do as a believer in Christ is to imitate God. Be as unshakable in your hope as he is unshakable in his promise-keeping. Just imitate God. And so it talks here about an unshakable faith. The Greek word gives a sense of a trembling or a tremoring of our faith.

We have in our living room, we have a light, and I don't know if it's the socket or the light bulb, but every time I walk by, the light flickers and gets dim. If I stomp my foot next to it, it goes out completely dark. Something has to be done and we all know who is going to do it, alright? It's going to be me. "There's an electrical problem, hon." Okay. It's my job. Alright? But I'm just kind of enjoying it just like a scientific experiment. Like if I walk by lightly, it flickers a little bit. If I stomp, it goes out. If I stomp again, it comes back on again. Is that the nature of your hope? Is it that fragile? Does it flicker that much? We're called on this text to hold unswervingly to the hope that we profess, to make that hope just come alive in your heart. Read Revelation 21 and 22. Just read again and again what you're going to get. Read the other promises that describe your future heavenly life.

Are you characterized by an unshakable hope? Do you see these things in your mind's eye or do you flicker every time some sin comes in your life, or if some temptation or some trial, medical trial, financial trial, do you flicker? Does your hope flicker? Don't have a flickering hope. Now, these first two exhortations were internal.

The author now turns and causes to look outside of ourselves to other Christians. We're not on this Christian journey alone. And so he wants us to look outward to other Christians and build them up in their faith. Look at Verse 24: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds." Let us consider." So the Christian life is a thoughtful life. We're considering people. We are a thoughtful people. We are a meditating people. We don't just go through life not noticing what's happening.

We're alert. We look in the text. We try to find details. We read. We think about these things. We consider them. As Jesus said, "Consider the ravens. They don't sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds." Or, "Consider the lilies of the field. They don't labor or spin. Yet I tell you not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. Now, if that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow thrown in the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" We're to be thinking these things out, reasoning them out. We're thoughtful people. Earlier in Hebrews 3:1, we're supposed to consider Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith. We're considering him. We're thinking about him. We'll be told to do the same again in Chapter 12. We're thinking about all of this, the thoughtful life.

Well, what are we supposed to consider here? Well, here's where the translation probably is going to lead you astray. The NIV gives us this: "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds." ESV, just about the same. Most translations go from "consider" to a word like "how." If you're considering a "how," you're considering a procedure, a technique, an approach, a method. But that's grammatically incorrect here in the Greek. The direct object of the verb "consider" is "one another." In other words, it's very plain in the Greek that what you are to be considering are people and not a technique or an approach or a pattern or a program. You're supposed to consider your brothers and sisters. We are supposed to think about each other.

Now, in what way are we to think about each other? Well, to spur or provoke one another to love and good deeds. Now, this is a fascinating word: "paroxusmos" is the word. Usually in the Greek, it has to do with something that causes a conflict or a fight or some kind of heat to rise up between people, causes bitterness between them, causes some kind of chafing or problem between people. That's the usual use of this word. But the author here uses it positively. Let's provoke one another toward love and good deeds. Or some of the translations gives us spur on. Let's spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Have you ever been spurred by a brother or sister in Christ? It's like, "Yeah, but I wasn't thinking love and good deeds at that moment."

Oh, listen, friends, there are good ways to do this and not good ways to do this. We're not going to forget what we learned in 1 Corinthian 13 and other places about the love that we have for one another, the good manners of the Christian life. But there is a spurring that the author has in mind here. So I meditated on an illustration for this, and I was reading recently an article about the development of the microwave oven after World War II. I love these techno geek-type illustrations. If you don't, just bear with me. Maybe I'll put a poll in for you next week or something like that, or describe a painting or something. But we'll go with techno geek this morning. I'm so sorry. But I think it'll be helpful. If not, just pause and then I'll get back to the message in a minute. But this is just an illustration.

In 1945, there was a company, Raytheon, that had developed all kinds of high-tech equipment and other things for the war effort. The war was over now and they had to transfer over to a peacetime economy. And like many companies, they wanted to find commercial applications for some of the things that they had developed during the war. And this one researcher was working with microwave tubes, and he had a candy bar in his pocket. No joke. And he walked by it and the thing melted in his pocket, and he thought, "Hmm," and that was the start of the microwave oven. And he said, "Okay, we can use these microwaves to heat up food." And it took a couple of decades to get it to be commercially viable as a product. But it's just an amazing story. But how does it work? Well, these microwaves in some mysterious way, excite or stimulate the water molecules or the fat molecules in the food and cause friction one to another and it heats up, and it cooks.

So we are to be like the microwave for each other. We're going to stimulate people. They're kind of static. They're like a block of ice. They're not moving. They're not doing anything for Jesus. They're frozen. They're not getting off the dime, and we are going to find a way, we're going to consider them and think, "How can I be a microwave oven for this person? How can I get them move? How can I do it?" And it could be through words of exhortation. It could be by the power of your example.

Sometimes it's just a simple invitation. "Hey, we're doing this, or we're doing that. Why don't you come with?" Or you hear a testimony like from earlier about Baptist men, and who knows? But a handful of you will get involved in that ministry. And so, they were just provoking you in a very sweet and positive way to love and good deeds. I think that we ought to make it a project or a pattern of behavior where we take on a handful of brothers and sisters in Christ and pray for them intentionally based on Hebrews 10:24, "God, what could this brother or sister's ministry be? What could they do for you? How could they serve you? What kinds of gifts do they have?" And if you have no idea, get to know them then. Get to know them. Find out what they love, what kinds of things they may be good at.

I think it's a perfect ministry for home fellowship, don't you? Starting tonight, just find out. Learn what people might be good at, what kinds of ways they might be able to serve. You don't want your brother or sister to be poor on Judgement Day, do you? Rich and grace saved by grace, but what about the good works? Do they have any rewardable activities? Do they have any good deeds that they did by faith? Do you care about that for your brother and sister? You should. We should be caring about each other's rewards, Judgment Day rewards. I care about yours. That's why I'm preaching this sermon right now.

I want you to be rich on Judgment Day, good works galore. And I want to provoke you to love, a river of love and good deeds just coming. And why? Because Ephesians 4 tells me those good works build up the body of Christ to full maturity. We need you to do your spiritual gift ministry. We need you to do those good works. And so if you're more like static in your life right now, think of yourself as like a frozen dinner that just got taken out of a freezer and then you come to a good church or you're involved in a good ministry and there's just microwaves in you and pretty soon you're going to be hot and useful to somebody. Let's provoke one another to love and good deeds.

Let's consider each other, let's ponder each other, let's pray for each other so that we can do this. And by the way, this is the second half of what I gave you earlier in a sermon months and months ago of two reasons why for the rest of your life, you need to be a covenant member of a good church. Remember what I said, Hebrews 3 negatively, you need to be a covenant member of a good church so that people will protect you from your own sinfulness. We are to watch over one another and encourage one another daily so that nobody will be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. You remember that. And now in Hebrews 10, we're going to watch over one another and think about each other, consider each other and pray for each other, so that they're not empty-handed on Judgment Day, but they have good works to show. So, we were rich.

And by the way, in both of those, Hebrews 3, Hebrews 10, you need to know and be known. You've just got to know each other and be in community with each other. It's hard to do in this church, isn't it? I mean, you people, very few people live within walking distance. And so you got to get in the car and drive, and that's why home fellowships, if you're not involved in a home fellowship, please pray about it and get involved, because I don't know how you're going to know and be known just coming and sitting and listening in a few conversations and go. It's hard. So bottom line, we've got to be involved in a good church, covenant members of a good church. And so the author says let us keep on meeting together.

Forth, "let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing." We need assemble together. This is huge. In the Old Testament, again and again, the psalmist talks about, "I'm not going to hide your faithfulness in the great assembly. I'm going to speak in the great assembly." God's people were meant to be together. Now the Jews got together three times a year, a whole nation for those assemblies, and then weekly in their synagogues. But they would assemble together. And so the author is saying fundamental to our growth as Christians is we need to meet together. We've got to get together as Christians. We've got to be healthy in this. And the author puts it negatively. He says we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.

This is not an accident. We're not talking about an accidental thing that happens, just happened to me in the Christian life. No, this is a willful choice. Says, "Let's not forsake the assembly." So willful choice you make to turn your back on faithful church attendance, to turn your back on your brothers and sisters in Christ and not fellowship with them anymore. It's something that you decide to do. It says later, "As some are in the habit of doing," this is a habitual thing. The word habit there is ethos. It's the ethic of their life. They have made a decision and they have turned away from faithful involvement in a local church. They're not coming to worship anymore.

And this is a huge thing. We have got to be faithful to be here. You just need to come. You need to be here for corporate worship. You need to be involved in the life of the church and receive what you need for spiritual health and growth. So let me ask you: Do you have an increasing desire to meet with God's people in fellowship, a corporate worship? Do you have an increasing desire for that? Or is your desire tailing off? If you have an increasing hunger for good Christian fellowship, then you're healthy spiritually. If you have absolutely no desire to be in church, there's a good question whether you're a Christian at all.

Now, we generally are kind of in between those two extremes. Our desire to be here on Sunday morning, waxes and wanes. Sometimes it's stronger than others. And what we need to do is study what types of things cause our desire to be in church to wane. What are the things that Satan's using to cause you to not so much want to be in church? First and foremost, you know it's your own personal sins. When you're in sin, you don't want to be around people who seem to be doing great and their struggles with sin, and that's church, right? Everybody's doing great. I had a flawless week. Do you believe that? No, talk to my wife. Well, don't. Well, at any rate, I didn't have any flawless week. I've never had a flawless week.

I don't think I've had a flawless hour in my life. But you know what it's like? If you're really in sin, you're violating your conscience, you're in some habit, you don't want to be in church, it causes you to want to drift and say, "Look, it's just I don't feel good there. The sermons are too clear about that. I just don't want to be involved in that." And so you start to drift. Or it could be a broken relationship. It just would take one. One person says something, does something, hurts you in some way at church, and there's bitterness and there's unforgiveness.

The Book of Hebrews, we'll talk later about a root of bitterness that springs up and defiles people. And because of that, you just don't want to be there, trying to avoid that person. It's uncomfortable, or it could be a sin of omission. You feel that the church failed you. You had a medical need. You had a financial need and no one called. No one cared. No one came. No one did anything. And so there's a bitterness that comes in your heart and you don't want to be there anymore, and Satan uses that to trap you. Something happened.

It could be pride and arrogance. This happens with some people. "I don't need church. I minister all week long." This is especially a danger for those involved in ministries, parachurch ministries and others. They don't really need Sunday morning church because they've had Bible studies all week long and do other things. And so they just don't need to be involved in church, and plus, "Those mediocre Christians hold me back anyway." That's an attitude of arrogance, like you don't need the church in some way. It could be a problem of a lack of submission, the lack of joyful submission to God-ordained authority. The elders or the pastors may be leading the church in a direction that you're not comfortable with or something like that, or you may have had an encounter with one of them.

Or again, the proverbial sins of omission which are just killers in ministry. You know, the pastor didn't do this or didn't do that or the elders didn't do the other. And so, again, a feeling of bitterness can come up and that person starts to drift away or not want to be involved in the church anymore. It could be an increasing love for the world, a love for your career, a love for money, a love for hobbies. That's a real danger. We have so many options as Americans to please and amuse ourselves, and some people choose some of those amusements rather than church involvement. Perhaps a simple love of sleeping in. You know, you work hard throughout the week and Sunday's your one chance to sleep in.

But it's dangerous. You know, it's dangerous. The elders of the church are called on by God to watch this one almost more closely than anything else. This is the signal sin. This is how we know there's a problem. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's weirdness in church attendance, there's going to be some problem. It could be of any one of these types, but there's some issue. So the elders are called on as undershepherds to watch over this issue very carefully and to look after it. And it's exhausting because people can be fine in April and having a hard time in June or July spiritually. And so it's just so important and it's important for the church to support and pray for the elders in that ministry and not fight it if the time comes for there to be church discipline on the issue of people that aren't attending anymore.

It's my conviction that every church role, Baptist church or any other church, well, let's talk about Baptist, should be made up of only two categories of people, those that are in a very healthy way regularly involved in the life of the church and those who are physically unable to do so and are receiving ministry from the church. That's it. What category did I leave off? People we haven't seen in a long while but are able-bodied. We have got to work on that one. And it's a whole church effort. And so in your home fellowships, or just as you noticed in your Bible for Life class…But different things, let's shepherd each other and let's keep close to each other and let's watch those attendance patterns.

We don't have to be cult-like, you know? "You weren't in church this morning." You know, you get a call at 1:10 in the afternoon, you know? Hey, look, I'm not against 1:10 phone calls, I'm just saying it doesn't have to be... The metal detector doesn't have to be set at that level. But I think we need to shepherd each other and be aware, need at least know that they weren't there to see if there's a ministry opportunity.

And so, finally, "Let us encourage one another," it says, "and all the more as you see the day approaching." How sweet that this place would be an oasis of encouragement. You come here and you get courage in your Christian life. You get courage to fight against sin. You get courage to minister. It'll be a witness at the workplace, you get courage, and it comes in a variety of ways, power of example, people using words to build you up, prayer life of the church, you get encouraged and accelerates as you see the day approaching. What day is that? Friends, that's Judgment Day, that's Second Coming of Christ Day. When Jesus comes back, it's coming soon. And so, all the more, let's encourage one another as that day comes. Close with me in prayer.

Andrew M. Davis: So on to focus your mind this morning, immediately on Pivotal text in our section of scripture today, I want you to look at Hebrews 10:14. I really do mean for you to look there if you have copies of the Bible. It's just helpful to look at the text as I'm preaching because all I'm going to do is go phrase by phrase, as usual, and explain it, and you'll be able to track. And my desire is that you would take the teaching that the spirit gives you during this time and marry it or link it together with phrases or text, or words that are in the text, so that you can remember it later and you go back and as you read Hebrews 10:11-18, you'll be able to call to mind again the things that are unfolded for us today.

But I want to focus immediately on verse 14. It's just one of those sterling verses those glittering verses that you can just remember for years to come. It says, "Because or for by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." It's an Incredible verse. And it brings our mind immediately to consider the topic of perfection that we think about the issue of perfection or being perfect. What does it mean to be perfect? We use that word from time to time, maybe not every day, But we think about the topic of perfection. It's been in front of philosophers, and religionist for since time immemorial, Greek philosophers worked on the concept of perfection Aristotle said there are three elements or aspects, perhaps to perfection, something is said to be perfect, if it's complete having all of the necessary parts. He used the word perfect in that way, or something secondly, so good that it cannot be in any way, improved upon.

Or thirdly, he said something which absolutely or finely in every way attains its purpose. That's what Aristotle thought about Perfect. I think it's probably valid. Those insights do link up with the concept of perfection. We use it in various realms of experience like in mathematics. There's something called a perfect number, Something like that. In science, there are perfect... There's a perfect gas, or a perfect crystal, something like that. We use that word.

Gems, people always looking for the perfect diamond, I think that that's probably behind the pearl of great price, the parable that Jesus told of an expert in pearls, who spent his whole life looking for... We would have to just stick the word in there. The perfect pearl. He had in mind what it would look like the size of it. Its shape, its color etcetera. He knew what he was looking for, a connoisseur of pearls spent his whole life and finally found one worth more than anything he'd ever seen in his life. You have to say, "Is this the perfect pearl?" He would say "Yes, as far as I can understand a perfect pearl this is it."

In baseball there such a thing as a perfect game I'm such a purist, I just think a perfect game is 81 pitches, all of them strikes. And the batter didn't even need to bring his bat, okay? Because he's not touching the ball. That's never happened. Probably never will, but that's my idea of a perfectly pitched baseball game. Alright, but basically the pitcher gets every 27 all 27 men out, They don't succeed to get on base. That's a perfect game. There's just not many of them.

You know in everyday life, we probably hear the word, most frequently in this expression. No one's perfect. And here we come to the real issue, and that is that as we look around this world, as it says in Psalm 119:96, "To all perfection, I see a limit, But your testimonies are boundless." So, he's comparing what he sees in the physical realm around us with the pure, the perfect word of God, there Psalm 119, the testimony, the greatness of the scripture. And he says, I just see flaws everywhere when it comes to us as human beings, we know that we are not perfect, we're not physically perfect. We know that as you look in the mirror, you can see flaws. You have, in your mind, an image of what a perfect man or a perfect woman would look like, 'cause you look in the mirror and you see flaws and deficiencies just physically as you get older, as your body doesn't work as well as it used to. You can see, you're not perfect, physically, you're actually heading toward death and you know that your body systems are falling apart, to some level.

But none of that troubles us Christians anywhere near as much as the fact that we are sinners, and that we do not line up with the perfect standard of the Law of God, that we are morally imperfect that we are morally impure. That's what causes us grief and we have a sense through the Word of God that we must be morally pure, perfect to be in the presence of God. Jesus said in Matthew 5:48, "You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Other verses teach it without using the word perfect. "Be holy because I am holy." Be perfectly separated and pure from sin. "God is light, and in Him, there's no darkness at all." We can't bring any contagion of sin into His presence, if we hope to be with him and live with him, we must be perfect and the glorious good news of the gospel. Look again in verse 14, if you are a Christian, this verse declares that you are perfect right now. You are already perfect, by one sacrifice Jesus has already made you perfect. It's an incredible teaching. The past tense is there by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever etcetera.

And so this is a declaration that we are perfect in some sense, and I want to unfold what that means to try to understand the nature of that perfection. And then to try to understand the yearning that we have inside us stated, I think, very plainly for in 2 Corinthians Chapter 13, "Aim for perfection." That we have within ourselves, a sense of what the perfect Christian life looks like, That we would wake up tomorrow morning and say, "I want God today the perfect Monday. I want to live in perfect obedience to your laws today. I yearn for it." And how do we put those together? That's what's in front of us in this one text Hebrews 10:14.

The Context

But let's get the context for it, as we try to understand how it fits in and try not to go astray, we want to interpret everything in context, and try to get it properly.

And so we're right in the middle of Hebrews 10:1-18, and this is the doctrinal pinnacle of the book. Really from 10:19, I think to the end of the book, more or less, all the author's doing is telling you how we should live based on the doctrines we've learned in the first 10 chapters, so we're going to get, we're turning a corner as of next week, and we're going to leave the doctrinal considerations of the atonement, and the blood, Jesus' priestly sacrifice, these things that have been occupying our minds for months now, really in Hebrews, And we're going to start asking the question, "Okay, now how shall we live?" We'll start that very thing next week.

But here we come to the culmination, the pinnacle of the doctrinal section of the Book of Hebrews, the book of Hebrews was written I believe, to Jewish people who had made a profession of faith in Christ, in the first century there. But under tremendous pressure, various pressures, they're being tempted to turn their backs on their profession and to go astray from Christ, and to go specifically back to the Old Covenant back to the Old Testament, sacrificial system back to the animals, analytical priest, all of that. So the author gives us just magnificent 10 chapters of the greatness of Jesus Christ, His glory. How much greater He is than the Old Testament prophets and the angels greater than Moses, greater than Aaron and Levi and Abraham and all the heroes of old. And then, specifically, as he zeros in on what the Old Covenant did greater as a high priest to offer a greater sacrifice that is effective for removing sin.

And praise God for the book of Hebrews. That's all I can say. I think without this what I would call a linchpin book here. We really would wonder what the Old Covenant was all about. I think without Hebrews, we just didn't have it. We had 65 books in the Bible we just didn't have Hebrews. I would personally be wondering what was all that about? Maybe there's enough in other places to try to understand it, but there's just so many insights that come to us by studying Hebrews that we wouldn't have, I think, any other way.

And so, in a magnificent way this book of Hebrews just pulls together the old covenant and the new and explains it, It explains why did God institute, the animal sacrificial system and Why do we need it no longer. The Book of Hebrew stands in the gap between the two and explains it so beautifully. And so, in this chapter, already we've had Hebrews 10:1-10, we're assured in verse 4 that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away human sin. It's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away human sin. We have pitted against the blood of bulls and goats, the Body of Christ, the physical body. "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me." And so we have the Doctrine of the Incarnation. Talked about it last week, how God the Father knit Jesus's body together, inside the womb, of His mother, Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit and so Jesus was fashioned a normal ordinary human body, He was truly man, and He also was fully and truly God. And so He came to die. And so we have these things, compared, the blood of bulls and goats ineffective with the body of Jesus, which was given for us.

And so in verse 10, we have by that will, the will of God, to establish this New Covenant, "By that will we have been made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all." So that's where we ended it last time.

Now, we go on into verses 11-18. And so he immediately talks about the superiority of Christ priestly ministry look at verses 11 and 12, "Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties. Again and again, he offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins, but when this priest had offered for all time, one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God." So here, one last time, we have declared for us very plainly the superiority of Christ's priestly ministry.

Five Points of Superiority

Final summary of this doctrinal section. And so he's going to compare Christ to the Levitical priest at five quickly, just five ways. This is really by way of repetition. We've already had these kinds of things, but just very quickly, he compares Christ with the Levitical priest in the issue of time, the issue of person, the issue of His physical posture, His sacrifice, and His effectiveness. These five things. So because it's review I can go through it quickly. We have the issue of time, day after day in verse 11, and also, again and again, do you see that. Day after day and again and again, compared with in Verse 12, one sacrifice. This priest had offered for all time, one sacrifice for sin. So the endless repetition is compared with the once for all nature. We've already seen that before, don't need belabor the point.

Secondly, the person. Day after day, every priest stands. Etcetera. So we have the sense of a plurality of priest. There were many of those priests. The author has told us. We've already been through this before again, by way of review. There were lots of those Levitical priests, many of them, all of them sinners. But again, contrast in verse 12, but when this priest had offered etcetera. So we have a clear contrast of the actual person, we have the sublime person of Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, He is the radiance of God's glory, He is the Son of God, took on a human body, compared with these sinful descendants of Aaron of Levi. That's who we have.

So we have person then we have His posture. I'm going to talk more about this in a moment, but it says every day or day after day, every priest stands to perform his religious duties. "But when this priest had offered for all time, one sacrifice for sins, He sat down." So we have a contrast of the standing priests plural with the seated priest singular. Again, the author is saying that those priests had to continually offer their sacrifice their works are never done.

It's always more animal bloodshed because it's ineffective. And they were under the law, to keep doing it. There were no days off. It's like, "Hey, Israelites if we can just take one day off from sinning I'd like to take a day off from offering the blood." But there won't be any days off. And so they're continually needing to offer these sacrifices. Jesus doesn't need to do that. And so He sits down, it says. We'll talk more about that in a moment. And so we also see the sacrifice day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties again and again. He offers, what does it say, the same sacrifices. Here we go again. The same things. Bulls and lambs and sheep, goats and pigeons and doves, it's the same thing over and over, it's just animals. But when this priest had offered for all time, one sacrifice, that body which we just referred to in the first 10 verses, referred to a predicted in Psalm 40, "A body you prepared for me." That was the one perfect final sacrifice, we talked about last week.

And then the final point of comparison, the effectiveness. Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties, again and again, he offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins, they're ineffective. They were just types, shadows, pictures, they were not the reality, they couldn't do anything. But Jesus's blood can. And we have this incredible picture of the effectiveness of Jesus, and so we come to this question of just the total ineffectiveness of human devices for making sinful people like us right in the side of God. There's nothing we can contrive to do that. Two great categories of contrivances, false religions, and human moral striving, and effort. Those are the two great things that we try to do.

I had the opportunity, earlier this summer to see first hand Tibetan Buddhism. It's remarkable to me to see the number of Westerners that were there, and we would talk to some of them from Germany or Russia, or America who came to Kathmandu, thinking that they would find spiritual enlightenment there. And what they found at the center of that Tibetan Buddhist system was this big stupa, this huge kind of round building with whitewashed steps that led nowhere. You go up to this kind of portico area, and you can just walk around the thing, that's it, it doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't do anything. You can't get inside it. There are these weird human eyes painted at the top, there are these long ropes going up to the pinnacle, there are these prayer flags fluttering in the stiff breeze and that's it, and they walk around and around thinking to reduce their karma and to be enlightened, and they spin these prayer wheels and that's it, that's a human contrivance, God didn't command these things to be done. They can't make a sinner right in the side of a holy God, they can't take away our conscience of wickedness, they can't clean a defiled conscience, it's ineffective. So also, every other human religion.

The same also with that human moral striving, the turning over a new leaf-ism. Taking care of the alcohol problem or the sexual addiction or the problem with anger, anger management, whatever it is you try to do, you may actually see some improvements in specific areas in your life. All that's going to do is stoke your pride to make you think you don't need Jesus. It's not effective for appeasing the wrath of God or making you righteous in God's sight, and it really can't cleanse your guilty conscience. It's ineffective.

Friends, if even the animal sacrificial system that came down from on high established by the Word of God is ineffective how much more these human contrivances that God never commanded nor did they enter His mind. Ineffective. But there is something praise God that is effective. For reconciling sinners like us and making us according to the verse, perfect and in God's sight. Oh, how sweet is that truth. There is one way, there is only one way, and it's Jesus. By this one sacrifice and that's what we have. Is it effective, is it enough? Is it enough?

I was thinking about that is the blood of Jesus enough for me? So I pictured in my mind. I don't know why I was picturing this a young boy, maybe not little boy, but he may be an adolescent in the colonial days and he's left by some uncle in some inn somewhere. And he's left with a little wooden box. And this is a rustic lad, he doesn't have much education and worldly wisdom or in currency or any of these sort of things. He just says that his uncle told them that everything he needs is going to be in that box. Well, he brings the box of the Innkeeper and sets it up on the platform and says, "Is this enough for my room and board for the week?" The Innkeeper, a scrupulously honest man opens up the box and finds inside dozens and dozens and dozens of gold coins.  Is this enough? One of these coins would be enough for a month of room and board here. This is more than enough.

Friends, I tell you the blood of Jesus is more than enough for your sins, infinitely so. It is a treasury of merits that is infinite, in value. And I know that that word was used by medieval Catholic theologians to speak of the acts of the saints, the extra credit that they had gotten by being more righteous than God, needed in this world. How do you do that? I don't think you can, it's not possible to do more than God's will. You can certainly do less. I've done that before, so have you. But how do you do more? It's impossible. They had this idea of a box, a treasury of merits and the Pope could dispense these merits. Forget all that. I'm just taking the language. Treasury of merit. Yet the real treasury of merit is Jesus and out of the box of what He has achieved on the cross, come all the good things in your life, including full forgiveness of sins. It's more than enough it's effective.

And so it says, When He had offered this sacrifice, He sat down at the right hand of God and He is there waiting, it says, look at verses 12-13, "When this priest had offered for all time, one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God and since that time, He waits for His enemies, to be made His foot stool." So there He is, at the right hand of God, the Scripture says that He is seated. Four times in the Book of Hebrews, that doctrine is given to us, it's there right at the beginning in Hebrews 1:3, "Son is a radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of His being, and sustaining all things by His powerful word, and after He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven."

And so that's a picture of Jesus, seated on a throne of divine glory as the Son of God. So there's a sense in aura of divine radiance, around that being seated. In Hebrews 8:1-2, it's a seed of priestly glory, it says, "We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary. The true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man." And so, the picture there is of His accomplished priestly work, which we pick up here again in Chapter 10, but also of His ongoing ministry. He's seated and He serves. So the sacrifice has been offered, once for all, but the ongoing intercessory ministry He continues to pray for us at the right hand of God.

Here we have a seed of perfect sacrificial achievement. He sits down. Because there's no more work to do, it's done. And then in chapter 12, we'll see it one more time. It says there in 12:2, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." And so there is a picture of the victor, the champion, He has run His race with endurance, He has received the victor's wreath and He sits down in triumph and glory, having achieved our salvation for us. Four times we have this image of Jesus seated at the right hand of God. It's a position of access to God. And it's a position of power over the world, I think those are the two reasons that we're told this.

He's at the right hand of God, so He can speak to his father on our behalf, and He does. He talks about you a lot.  Some days you need more talking about than others, but He's interceding for you, as we've already talked about, He is interceding and praying for you, for your faith that it will not fail, no matter what Satan throws at you, no matter what your flesh is doing and how it acts up, He is praying for you that your faith will not fail, He is at the right hand of God so has access to the Father. He's praying for you. But I think that the Scripture also presents the right hand as a place of power from which He rules the universe on your behalf, isn't that marvelous?

Christ Waiting for His Enemies to be Made a Footstool

Jesus is running, He's King Jesus, and He's running the universe to benefit you and finish your salvation. It's beautiful. Get that at the end of the Ephesians at Chapter 1 and there it says that "God [the Father[ raised him [Christ] from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all ruling authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come and God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the Church." The word for there to me means to benefit the church or on behalf of the church, He appointed Jesus sovereign King of kings to benefit you and me.

So that our salvation will be completed in this life. Beautiful, so there is Jesus seated at the right hand of God, and also the scripture presents Him as waiting, He's at the right hand of God, He's seated and He's waiting for his enemies, to be made His foot stool. So it pictures Jesus waiting. Now behind all of this is the zeal of God, the father to glorify God, the Son for what He did at the cross. What a rich theme that is. The Father says in Hebrews 1:13, "Sit at my right hand." Father is speaking to son, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot stool for your feet." This is the activity of the Father. And He's zealous for the glory of His son.

And because in Philippians 2 Jesus "obeyed even to the point of death, even death on a cross, God exalted Him to the highest place and He gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." That is the Father's zeal to exalt Jesus and get every knee to bow, it is to His glory, it is, His zeal to do that. Teaching on Wednesday nights, and we've talked about this in John Chapter 8, how Jesus in every chapter in John's Gospel is pictured arguing with His enemies. In every single account, there's division, and argument and conflict. At one point, Jesus's enemies get extremely disrespectful to Him. In John Chapter 8, they come and say, "Aren't we right in saying, that you're a Samaritan and demon possessed." In other words, that He is born of illegitimacy, He's a bastard son, His mother had relations with some Samaritan man. "Aren't we right in saying that, and that you're demon-possessed?" Oh, it's disgusting as you read it, it's just disgusting what this pure holy Son of God had to endure. Jesus said this, "I am not possessed by a demon, but I honor My Father and you dishonor Me. I'm not seeking glory for Myself, but there is One who seeks it, and He is the judge."

Do you realize the power of those words? He said, "I'm not going to do it, I'm just going to sit at God's right hand, the Father will do it, He'll see to it that I'm honored, He'll see to it that I'm glorified, He'll see to it." And the father is zealous, He burns like the sun to see that thing done. Psalm 2, talks about it. "Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain, the kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against His anointed one. 'Let us break their chains, they say let us throw off their fetters.' The one and throne in Heaven, laughs, the Lord scorns of them. Then He terrifies them and rebukes them in His anger saying, 'I have installed my king on Zion, my Holy Hill.'"

The end of that Psalm, Psalm 2 he says, "You better be warned, don't fight the son. Don't oppose the son because that'll make Almighty God your enemy." It's a terrifying thing. And so Jesus in this text is pictured as seated and waiting, He's waiting for His enemies to be made His foot stool. And He is waiting with the same patience that God the Father exhibits toward those wicked people and He's very patient, it's amazing how patient God is to wicked people. You know it says in Romans chapter 9, "What if God choosing to show His wrath and make His power known bore with great patience, the objects of wrath prepared for destruction." Oh, He's patient toward wicked people who are fighting His Son, He doesn't kill them in an instant, He's patient.

Christ Waiting in Expectation

And Jesus is waiting patiently too, He's waiting. The Greek word here implies a patient waiting for the Father to do this work. So he's there at the right hand of God, He's waiting patiently for His father to subdue His enemies. He's waiting in submission and in dependence, total dependence on the father, whatever the Father wills, is fine, He's submitting to the will of the Father. And His father will make His enemies a foot stool, and so also the church has to learn to wait patiently for that too. John writes about this in Revelation 1, and verse 9, he says, "I John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours and Jesus, was on the island of Patmos, because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus," he was in exile. And you know what you get as a Christian? That's what John says. He said, "You get a kingdom, you also get patient endurance." You've got to endure patiently, because the enemies are still there and they're powerful.

In the Book of Revelation, later Chapter 6, after the fifth seal is broken. John saw vision of martyrs, people who have been beheaded, up in heaven waiting and they're crying out for vengeance, for what was done to them while they were on earth. "How long Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" And they're told the wait patiently until the full number of martyrs has come in. So we have to wait patiently. Jesus is waiting patiently, the father's waiting patiently, but be assured, Christ enemies will be a foot stool under His feet. So what is the Father waiting for? Well God's patience means salvation, some of the elect begin as enemies. I tell you, all of them did. Doesn't the same Colossians at one time we were enemies in our minds as shown by our evil behavior? We were enemies, we were in opposition.

God worked our salvation and God's patience means salvation for the elect, and we can't tell the difference between the weed and the terrorist, can we? Saul of Tarsus that morning of his conversion sure, looked like a weed to me, he sure looked like an enemy, sure, looked like a persecutor breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, murderous threats. In one sense you could say he should have been killed God said, "No, he should be converted." We'll convert him not kill him. Thanks be to God. And so, all of Jesus' enemies are either going to be converted or condemned, that's how it is and Jesus is waiting patiently for whatever the Lord wills.

Now we come to the verse, look at Verse 14, again, "Because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Now, what's the link between verse 13 and 14? We know that there is a link because verse 14 begins with the word for or because. Well, it's really not that complex here. Jesus is seated because there's no more work to be done on the issue of sacrifice. That's the link. And so, He is seated in verse 13, because by that one, sacrifice He's made us perfect. The work is perfect.

And you know what's so magnificent about this? Jesus in John's gospel, His final words before He dies were, "It is finished." The Greek word for finished, it literally could be translated. It is perfect. There is your perfection dear friends, that is your perfection, Jesus dead on the cross, His blood shed there is your perfection. There's nothing more that can be added nothing more needs to be done. It's perfect, what an awesome thing and so it says by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever. Those who are being made holy. Now, why does this verse glitter for me so much? Well, I look on it. I don't mean in any way to be irreverent, but as your one-stop-shopping verse for the doctrine of salvation, in one verse you can get both justification and sanctification. In just one small verse you can just memorize this because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever, those who are being made holy, and you get both justification and sanctification in one Verse.

Now, what do I mean by that? First, I don't think that Hebrews was written by the Apostle Paul. And so I don't think that the author speaks about the doctrine of justification with the same type of language that Paul uses in Romans or in other places. What is the doctrine of justification? It is that by the blood of Jesus, by the sacrifice of Jesus we are forgiven of all of our sins, simply by faith if you just trust in Jesus, there is a beautiful exchange between you and God, you and Christ your wickedness and sins imputed to Him, and He dies justly under the wrath of God for them, His righteousness imputed to you and God justly receives you as righteous on the basis of that, that transfer happening only by faith. As you trust in Jesus, you are seen to be righteous. Well, the author here uses different language with the same concept, by the one sacrifice of Jesus, He has past tense, made you perfect forever.

Oh what a thought that is? You can't be any more righteous in God's sight than you are right now, you can't do any better you can't be any more positionally acceptable to God than you are, and the word forever means it's never going to change. It will survive whatever it is you do this week, whatever it is that happens between now and the day you die, you'll be seen day after day after day after day, as perfect in Jesus. Isn't that awesome? Perfectly righteous. Can't improve on it. That's what the word "perfect" means. And through Judgment Day, God on Judgment Day, when the Cortes see that the books are open, and everything is rolled out from your life. Every careless word that you've ever spoken, every intention of your heart all of it rolled out, God will declare you perfect on that day as well, perfect forever and beyond on into the new Heaven, the new Earth, into the eternal state, every day in that beautiful place. You will be morally perfect, in God's sight.

And it's past tense here because it already happened to you if you're a Christian, whenever that is, whenever that happened for me coming on 30 years ago. For 30 years, god seen me as perfect in Jesus. That's my position. That's your position. Doesn't matter what you did today, yesterday, if you're genuinely Christian, you have genuine faith in Christ, you are perfect seen to be perfect by faith alone, that's justification, beautiful.

Those Who Are Being Sanctified

Now here's the tricky part, is the rest of the verse talking about progressive sanctification. Most scholars say no. I say yes, just because I love it. It's just, it's so convenient to have it all in one place. I'll do my best to persuade you, if you're not convinced it's okay because both of the options are good ones and it all comes down to the use of this word "sanctified" or made holy trying to understand that. Okay, let's dig in and try to understand what the second half of the verse may be saying.

"For by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever, those who are sanctified." Most of the translations just say those who are sanctified. The problem with that grammar is it gives you the sense that that is past as well, but that's not what the Greek grammar says. It's a present tense. The NIV gives a sense of present progressive activity, something that's going on right now that is accurate to the Greek, it's passive, something is happening to these people, by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever. Those who are presently at the present time being sanctified, that's true grammar, everybody sees that. Well, what could it mean? Well there are two options two responsible options.

One of them, which I'm not choosing this morning, but which is the majority choice, has to do it the way the word is usually used and the word usually means set apart unto God as His sacred holy possession. It's sanctified in that it's His, it belongs to Him, it's His, He puts His name on it, a stamp of ownership, and it's His holy possession, that's it. There's no progressive-ness there, there's no improvement on that you're just set apart and you are God's. That is true, that happens in Jesus at justification that happens, and so that is a once for all instantaneous sanctification. You see what I'm saying? And that is the way the word is usually used not as a gradual improvement getting better and better every day, with Jesus, that's progressive sanctification. So in John 17, Jesus prays, He says, "Father, for their sake I sanctify myself that they too may be truly sanctified." Now listen, do you think Jesus is getting better and better in every way, growing in grace in the knowledge of Christ? Friends he is not He is setting Himself apart unto God at the cross to die for us, that's what it is.

So there's no improvement there. Or again in 1 Timothy 4, he talks about the food you eat, I hope you pray before you eat. I hope you at least do that. Friends, you should do so much more than that when it comes to prayer. But it says in 1 Timothy 4, that the food as you are praying for it and receiving it thankfully, is sanctified by the Word of God and by the prayers of the saints. Look that food is not getting holier and holier,  it's not improving every day. No, it needs to be eaten right now or it's going to go bad. It's set apart for God's sacred use namely to feed the saints and to make them strong. That's the way the word is usually used. So how would this work? Well, how is that once for all, thing happening a lot right now? Well, it has to do with the elect, God has chosen people, and as the Gospel spreads people are hearing the gospel and they're repenting and coming over into the kingdom, and are being sanctified, instantaneously all over the world. That's a valid interpretation.

So as by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are getting saved, all over the world. See? You understand it? Okay, let's set aside. It's not as exciting as this version, okay? This version says that by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever, those who are little by little by little getting to be more and more like Jesus. And why is that so sweet? Because we know we're not perfect, you know you're not. And what grieves you the most in your life, are your imperfections morally, the ways that you stumble over temptations and sins, and so in one verse, it's saying you're already perfect, now live perfect, and God is working that perfection in you, little by little, gradually He's working perfection in you. And frankly, if that second piece isn't going on the first piece, never happened friends.

If you're not growing in grace in the knowledge of Christ, if you're not seeing by the power of the Spirit sin put to death in your life, if you don't have, let's just go to the heart of the matter, the heart of the matter.

If you don't have a heart yearning after God's laws, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, that's exactly where He goes, the rest of the verse, He says (quoting Jeremiah 31) "The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: 'This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.' Then he adds: 'Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.'"

Interesting order. Transformation of the heart, then you know your sins are forgiven that's the order. So as you see your changed life as you yearn for righteousness, as you yearn to be a holy man, or a holy woman, as you grieve over the sin in your life, as you feel written inside your heart, the laws of God, though you can't seem to live them like you'd like to, but yet by the spirit putting to death and misdeeds of the body, growing in grace then you know you're already positionally perfect. I think that's what the verse is giving us. Now I've got other proof we'll get to it and do time. I don't want to give it to you, I do tell you the book of Hebrews does have a vision for progressive holiness.

Chapter 12 is very, very clear, we're told in chapter 12 that we're to set our eyes on Jesus who is the author, and perfecter of our faith, our faith isn't perfected yet, so we've got to run with endurance, we need to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles and run this race with endurance, that's sanctification language. Then it goes into discipline and says, the father disciplines us that we may share in His holiness, and that the discipline helps those that are trained by it, a training in holiness is sanctification, right? Or look again at 12:14, it says, "Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy, without holiness no one will see the Lord." That's a holiness that comes by efforts, by striving by putting sin to death without that holiness, you will not see God. We'll get to that in due time. I say to you even to the end chapter 13, he says, "May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant, brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus the Great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing His will listen and may He work in us what is pleasing to Him." That's sanctification language. In one verse, you have the beauty of justification and sanctification. And the very next verse testifies it has to do with God writing His laws in your minds, in your hearts. That's what He's doing. This is a glorious salvation, isn't it?

To be declared right at the beginning of the Christian life. Perfect, and then to be challenged every day of your life, to be perfect, like Jesus, it's a beautiful salvation. If you are running that race right now, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, grieving, when you sin, but knowing that Jesus is enough for you, trusting leaning on the Holy Spirit running that race, you're perfect, perfect right now, you'd be perfect tomorrow, you'd perfect the rest of eternity. And He is standing over you calling you upward, to live more and more like Jesus and some day, again Hebrews 12, you'll be among it says, "the spirits of righteous men made perfect." Instantaneously at death, they are made perfect by God, glorified and in the presence of God. How beautiful is that?

Application is plain, come to Christ, believe in Jesus, trust in Him. I've already called out to you, if you were invited here today as a friend or a guest, if you don't understand what I'm talking about, ask the person who invited you, ask someone else, don't leave this room in a Christ-less state, you don't know that you'll survive the day. I'm pleading with you to believe in Jesus while you have time and just know what I'm calling you to. Look with eyes of faith to Jesus dead on the cross, say "He is my Savior. That death was my death, I deserved it, I'm a sinner, I deserved it, but Jesus died for me it is more than enough for me." And then run that race with endurance. Know that He is sanctifying you, remember at the passive for by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever, those who are listening, being made holy. It's not primarily your work though, you must work. It is God's work in you by the power of the spirit through faith. Close with me in prayer.