Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Hebrews

  • Catching the Drift

    Catching the Drift

    About this sermon

    Hebrews warns believers to pay closer attention to what they have heard, lest they drift away. If the old covenant, delivered by angels, carried just penalties, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, declared by the Lord and confirmed by signs and gifts of the Spirit? Drifting happens gradually when we neglect God’s word and measure ourselves against others instead of his holiness. The remedy is to keep anchored in Christ through the word, so that we do not slide away from the salvation he gives.

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    Sermon transcript

    Amen. You may turn, if you would, in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews. We’ll be reading from chapter 2, if you would remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We’re reading this evening Hebrews chapter 2 verses 1 through 4. Hear the Word of God. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was tested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. You may be seated.

    Let’s pray. Our Father in Heaven, we would ask that you would give us your Spirit, that these might not be dead words, but that we might be alive to their truth, to their value, to their beauty, that they might be words that impact our lives, that change us, that we might come and hear your words of life. We ask that you would be with us this evening, that we might hear your truth and see its beauty. For Jesus’ sake we pray this. Amen. Well, the title of my message this evening is called Catching the Drift. Now, often when people speak of catching someone’s drift, they’re actually talking about whether you understand what they’re saying. But here I’m thinking of, as we say in Presbytery, arresting the drift. That is, catching the drift before you’ve gone too far.

    Well, Callie and I love to go kayaking. We often go on a river near our house in North Carolina called the Yadkin River, and when launching the kayak out from the bank, we always have to make a choice. Do we start out paddling against the current or simply begin by going with the current down the river? The advantage of going against the current to start means that it’s easier on the way back home, since you can just ride with the current. But on the other hand, if we take the easy way downstream first, we have to paddle back all the way against the current all the way home. Now, the current in the Yadkin right there is very subtle. From the bank, at first you can’t even tell that there is one. But as soon as you get in the water, it becomes pretty obvious.

    All we had to do was stop paddling. The instant we stopped paddling, the boat would slowly turn sideways, and within a few minutes we’d be completely turned around, drifting in the opposite direction. So even though you couldn’t always tell from the bank, there was a current all around us that wouldn’t let us stay still. Unless we were actively paddling, the current would begin pulling us in the opposite direction. Our passage this evening is talking about drifting. Not drifting down a river, but drifting away from the faith. So we’ll divide our time this evening by looking at three things. Number one, the tendency to drift, to drifting, why we drift. Number two, the danger of drifting, what happens when we drift. Number three is the solution to drifting, how to keep from drifting. So number one, the tendency to drifting, why we drift.

    Have you ever caught yourself spending more time than you would like on social media? I’ve come across a term recently called doom scrolling. Have you heard of it? It’s the ubiquitous practice of people on social media, video, or even news sites to become glued to their phone or computer, continuing to scroll for a long time and often inevitably finding increasingly depressing content. We get sucked in. Before we realize it, we’ve spent hours with very little helpful or good results to show for it. See, we have to remember that we don’t live in a world that is friendly to our faith. Now the Westminster Confession summarizes our three enemies as the world, the flesh, and the devil. Having been involved throughout my life in various denominations, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Presbyterians, I like to suggest sometimes that in general Pentecostals focus on the devil, Baptists focus on the world, and Presbyterians focus on the flesh.

    But the Bible teaches that we face all three of these enemies. Now in terms of the flesh, we must remember that we have an enemy on the inside. Paul uses the term flesh to refer to the sinful nature that we still have present within us even as believers. While the Bible is clear that sin has no more power over those in Christ, there is still a part of us that wants to sin because the presence of sin has not been fully removed. Despite receiving a new nature that wants to love God and obey him, Christians don’t always do this. Not yet. And we should not discount the role that our sinful flesh, sinful nature plays in tempting us to drift away from the faith. But we must also not forget that we have enemies on the outside.

    Despite the fact that some Christians want to ascribe every temptation and difficulty in our lives only to antagonistic evil spirits, we should not make the opposite mistake to think that every thought or temptation is due exclusively to our sinful flesh. The devil is real. Not every temptation comes from your own lack of self-discipline. Sometimes it really does come out of the blue, and it’s important to recognize that. Beating yourself up for being tempted by the devil is not helpful or true. Your sanctification is not just a battle between you, your old and new natures. There are real evil spiritual forces out for your spiritual blood intent on taking you down and out. But I think that the most subtle danger to drifting comes from not realizing how the values of an ungodly world are shaping us.

    Many reformed Christians have rightly pushed back against those who want to say that all of culture is evil and should be rejected. There’s much good and true even in a world marred by sin and a culture full of people that hate God. Common grace that God gives means that God restrains evil, and we need not condemn every idea coming from unbelievers as completely without merit. Yet, in this, we need to be aware of the potential for drift. There’s a current in this world. There’s the danger out there of the creep of two kinds of cultural ideas. One might not look like a threat. It seems right at first. Or the others that are obviously wrong but repeated so loudly and so often that we eventually begin to accept part of the premise. And this can happen with even the worst ideas.

    It usually happens gradually. But it’s more likely to happen the less deeply we’re studying scripture for ourselves. But before we wall ourselves up in a Christian community, consider that while the culture out there is the problem that we need to be wise to, we should not think that simply walling ourselves up to be an isolated, private Christian community will protect us from the world. Because the world out there finds its resonance within us. In 1 John 2, the Apostle John sums up what he describes as the world. He says in verse 16, For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. So this should make us realize that this is not something people out there struggle with.

    The desires of the flesh is, of course, bodily desires. Comfortable seats, clothes, houses, cars, delicious foods, and all the rest. Desires of the eyes. Those things that look attractive. Attractive cars, attractive people, attractive jewelry, and all the rest. In English, lust has a negative connotation while desire is more neutral. But there’s only one Greek word. That’s why some translations say desire, while others might say lust. See, the difference is not whether, the difference is in whether the desire is appropriate. Same for pride. While it can be good in some situations, like proud of your son or daughter, it can be bad in others. What John is talking about by the pride of life is not the I’m proud of you son. It’s the pride we take in our possessions, our positions, or our achievements. When you’re proud of what kind of car you drive, proud that you only eat organic, or maybe proud that you don’t buy into that nonsense, or simply more preoccupied with your identity in terms of what you possess than who you are in Christ.

    You’re drifting with the world. All of these things arise from within communities of people who have not been fully purged of all sinful desires. That includes Christians. Since we all have remaining sin nature, there’s a part of us that resonates with the outside culture and wants to drift towards those things. No one drifts towards holiness and truth. Our environment is flowing away from God. If you try to sit still, if you’re not paying attention, you won’t just pick up where you left off. You’ll wake up finding yourself a long way from home. Drifting is clearly easy to do, and it’s happening all around us. But what’s the danger of drifting? That brings us to number two, which is the danger of drifting. What happens when we drift? This summer, when I would talk to unbelievers about sin on the boardwalk, a lot of them shared a similar idea about sin.

    Even for the ones who had been to Catholic school, the prevailing thought was, since everybody sins, it’s not that big a deal. I mean, nobody’s perfect. If everyone does it, it can’t be that bad. So maybe there’s a current in this world, but what’s the big deal? What if I’m more comfortable drifting? Will the best things in life come to those who wait? To put it bluntly, the problem is that the current of this life is flowing straight to hell. Look back at our text. If we look in verse one, it says, don’t drift. But then verse two and three say why. Verse two, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

    The writer makes a comparison and then lets you connect the dots. In Hebrews, there’s a recurring theme of a contrast between the old and new covenants. We’ve just seen the ways in which the new covenant is better than the old in chapter one. In chapter one, we saw the old prophets versus the new son as the better means by which God speaks. And then the old angels versus the new son as the better messenger of God. But now Hebrews wants to remind us of the flip side of that coin. If the old covenant had a strict, harsh punishment, then the new covenant will have an even stricter and harsher punishment. Now this is not the way we typically think about the old and new covenants, but it’s something that Hebrews wants to highlight for us here.

    And he’ll expand, the writer will expand more on this theme later. Let’s make sure we understand what he means. First, when we see the phrase, the message declared by angels, we shouldn’t think of just a few scant references in the Old Testament when the angels directly spoke. We should understand this phrase to be a synecdoche. That is, speaking of a part of something to refer to the whole thing. For instance, when we say boots on the ground, what we mean is soldiers wearing those boots on the ground, not just a pile of boots. The Bible does this with God’s law, which is sometimes a reference to the entire Scriptures, not merely those portions of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which lay out particular commands. And in Acts 7, Stephen refers to the law delivered by angels.

    Angels delivered the law to Moses. And so when Hebrews says the message declared by angels, we should understand him to be talking about the whole Old Covenant. Hebrews is reminding us of God’s commanded punishment for disobedience in the Old Testament. God established a zero-tolerance policy for idolatry, murder, adultery, Sabbath-breaking, profaning his name, etc. Once the charge had been clearly established, there were no plea deals or exemptions. Judgment was certain. Rather than suggesting that in the New Covenant, judgment is less harsh and less certain, Hebrews assumes that a superior covenant carries more significant penalties. It’s an argument from the lesser to the greater. We can expect the New Covenant to be more comprehensive and with harsher punishments. It’s a serious mistake to think that now that God spoke by his Son, it’s a majestic Son that we can expect greater leniency against sin.

    Hebrews clearly tells us to expect the opposite. A part of the reason for this is the confirmation of the truth of the message. Look at verses 2 through 4. It was declared at first by the Lord, attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. The Old Covenant was completely true and reliable. You could rely on everything that was said, and it was provided through angels and prophets. How much less excuse does anyone have to doubt the New Covenant? Since it has been declared directly from God’s own mouth by his Son, as well as confirmed by apostolic authoritative eyewitnesses, miracles, and spiritual gifts. Now if you notice, the drifting that Hebrews is talking about here is warning against.

    He describes it as neglect, neglect such a great salvation. In this passage, he’s not warning against high-handed rebellion. That is a problem, but that’s not what he’s talking about here. He’s talking about a mindset that just doesn’t take the Bible’s message too seriously. This might not be a conscious rejection of its truth, merely a lack of concern, a distraction from, a deprioritizing of the Gospel in our lives. We find this illustrated in a parable that Jesus tells in Mark 4. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record a parable that Jesus told about four soils in which Gospel seed tries to grow. The soils represent different kinds of people and how they hear. The first doesn’t listen at all, and the seed never even germinates. But for the other three, the seed begins to germinate. In the rocky soil, the seed dies before it’s ripe because the soil was too shallow and difficulties just kill it off.

    But the third soil looks very promising. The seed begins to germinate. There’s no rocks in the way. The only problem is there’s too many other plants eating up the nutrients, taking up space, shading it from the sun. The seed never makes it. In Mark 4.18, Jesus explains that the thorny soil is they who hear the word. But the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things enter in and choke out the word, and it proves unfruitful. This is what the writer of Hebrews is anxious to warn us about. Wake up! Don’t drift! Pay close attention. Drifters won’t make it in the kingdom of heaven. At this point, I also want to point out the second word in verse 1, we. I’m sure all of us can think of people we have known who drifted away from what they heard.

    There’s even a classy name given to it these days called deconversion. Well-known proponents of Christianity suddenly turn their back on their faith and the church. While it may look sudden, I guarantee you that if you were close to this person, you would be able to trace a drift of neglecting the means of grace, of finding the Bible less and less important, and losing interest in Christ and the Gospel. Drifters will wake up to find themselves far from home. The reason that the writer of Hebrews says we is he wants you to look after, look after those around you. Don’t be content to pay close attention all by yourself. The writer is calling his listeners to gather each other and not let them drift. For some people, church is the last thing to go. For others, it’s the first.

    We need to be checking in with each other. Don’t just ask how things are going at work. How’s your Bible reading? How can I pray for your faith? How is your prayer life? How’s your marriage? How is your relationship with your kids? Don’t just assume everything is fine. Remember, the cost of drifting is too great to allow assumptions or feeling awkward to let others drift without being called out. So what’s the solution? Well, number three. The solution to drifting. How to keep from drifting. What is the solution to drifting? Well, if you’re a sailor on a ship, you prevent drifting with an anchor. Coming up in a few chapters, we’re going to see Hebrew talk about anchors for our soul. But in this passage, we have our answer in verse one. Pay attention. Pay much closer attention to what?

    To what we have heard. Remember how chapter one began. God spoke in these last days through his Son. The previous means by which God spoke, the prophets and the angels, they were meant to point away from themselves. But when God speaks by his Son, he is meant to be the focus of our attention. Our primary task as Christians is to focus on Jesus. The fact is, the command to pay attention to Jesus should be the easiest command to obey in the world. After all, he’s only the most majestic, glorious, fascinating, absorbing, and mesmerizing person to ever exist. Not only in simply who he is, but also in what he has done. He will be our subject of attention and source of delight for all of eternity, starting at the moment of our salvation. This is not a hard job.

    Pay attention to the most fascinating person in the universe, unless we don’t want to. The unbeliever wants nothing to do with Jesus, and our remaining sin nature wants to look at anything except Jesus. The natural man yawns in the face of glory. He neglects the glorious salvation found in Jesus. Turns out, even the most captivating subject can fail to capture the attention of someone who is distracted. That’s why, whenever we want to pay attention to something, we make preparations. Maybe you buy noise-canceling headphones to help drown out the world while you listen to your favorite album, audio book, or podcast. Ever motion at people to be quiet while you’re on a phone call? Maybe you arrange a cozy reading nook to curl up with your favorite book, or buy the right game day snacks just before the game so you can focus on it.

    Or maybe you drink caffeine to stay awake while studying. The point is, whenever we’re committed to focusing on something, we make preparations. We don’t just expect it to happen. Yet, how many of us neglect preparation to pay attention to Jesus? The first command that we get in the book of Hebrews is not to do something for God, not to clean up our act, but to pay attention. The first command in the book of Hebrews is not, work for Jesus, but look at Jesus. Listen to Jesus. As David says in Psalm 27 that we read earlier, verse 4, One thing I have asked of the Lord, and that will I seek after, 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 inquire in his temple.

    All of our spiritual life, all of our spiritual life change happens from this foundation. In 2 Corinthians 3, 18, Paul says, And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. Spiritual transformation is what we need, and only God can give it, and what he uses to do that is our gazing upon the sun. That’s why Hebrews opens with an entire chapter setting forth the majestic son of God. The Christian life is not primarily a collection of practices, but a subject of attention. The Pharisees had reduced following God to a set of practices. As a result, they lost sight of God. Instead of keeping their attention on the giver of the law, they let their attention drift to themselves.

    They became preoccupied not with God, but on how they were doing checking boxes for themselves, and how well others thought of them. And this is the very same drift that all of us must guard against. Very likely you know the phrase, comparison is a trap. It’s also a recipe for drifting. When you’re constantly comparing yourself to others, you’ll either feel terrible about yourself, or you’ll feel like you’re not that bad. In both cases, your frame of reference is gradually drifting away from God’s perfect holiness. You can always find someone who’s worse at something than you are. It’s like the game of telephone in which a message gets more and more garbled the longer it’s passed along the line. Our standard of holiness drifts further and further away from God’s standard of holiness when we only compare ourselves to others.

    So if beholding is how you and I change, what happens when you and I behold the glory of the Lord, when you and I pay much closer attention to what we have heard? What does it look like to highly regard instead of neglect such a great salvation? I want to spend a moment trying to help us do just that. So I want to suggest to you two things. First, when you look at Jesus, when you look at God, you begin to see yourself as you are. John Calvin began his work in the Institutes with the observation that we cannot understand ourselves apart from God. So the first thing that we see is our sin. Just a few weeks ago, Pastor Jeff preached from Isaiah 6 where the prophet caught a glimpse of God in his temple.

    The first thing he realized was he’s not that holy at all. He could see that his heart wasn’t pure. His hands weren’t clean. He was a filthy, guilty law breaker. But he also saw that his community was a filthy and guilty community. He was a sinner in a family, in a community, in a village of sinners. That meant he was done for. In fact, that was the first thing he said. Woe is me. One of the first things that we saw from Hebrews chapter 1 is that the son hates wickedness more than anyone else in the universe. So when you see yourself as a sinner, someone who was thought and done and said that which God hates with an absolute and eternal hatred, you know that you’re done for. Woe is me. God’s love for absolutely pure and holy righteousness burns white-hot, and out of it comes his white-hot hatred for sin.

    But when you look at the son of God, you see something else. You also see God’s atonement for your sin. When you pay much closer attention to the son who, after making purification for sin, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, you don’t just see God’s hatred against sin. You also see the unbelievable grace, mercy, and compassion of God for those that deserve his white-hot fury. You see the glorified nail scars in the human hands and human feet of the God-man himself, and you remember that every drop of that white-hot fury of God against you for your sin was fully and completely poured out on the one person who should never have had to taste a drop of it. You can see the breathtaking justice and mercy of God rolled into one, the son of God, the living one who literally went through hell to save you from sin’s penalty, died to break its power in your life, and rose again to give you a perfect record of obedience and fill you with the Holy Spirit as a new creation.

    This transformation is so foundational and fundamental that the Bible describes it this way in Galatians 2.20. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The life that I now live by faith in the Son of God. Living by faith, we use the term so often we can forget what it means. Faith is the instrument by which we receive salvation, which is to say, hearing and seeing the life-transforming promise God offers and believing it like your life depends on it, because it absolutely does. Faith has been described as the gaze of the soul. So to live by faith means to pay much closer attention to what you have heard.

    It’s the opposite of neglecting. We’ve got the direct words of Jesus, the testimony of the apostles, along with the wonders and miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, all urging us to look at God’s Son and not take our eyes off him. Let him capture your full gaze and attention. Don’t let the world, the flesh, or the devil make you drift away. And of course, keep an eye on those around you. Don’t let them drift away either. This salvation is too great to be neglected. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us your Son, that you have given us the one to show your love, that you so loved the world, that you gave your Son so that whoever believes on him might not perish and have eternal life.

    Lord, we ask that you would give us eyes of faith that we might do, as David said, gaze upon your beauty, and we would be captured and captivated by this. Lord, we ask that you would do this. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Heavenly Hierarchy

    Heavenly Hierarchy

    About this sermon

    1. God Says
    2. Angels Serve
    3. The Son Loves
    4. We Inherit

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Well, if you would now turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, the book of Hebrews will be looking at the first chapter, verses five through the end of the chapter. So if you would give your attention to God’s word reading from the book of Hebrews, chapter one, starting in verse five, for to which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you, or again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all God’s angels worship him. Of the angels, he says, he makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire. But of the sun, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

    The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. And you, Lord, laid the foundations of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment. Like a robe, you will roll them up. Like a garment, they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end. And to which of the angels has God ever said, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? This ends the reading of God’s word.

    You may be seated. Let’s pray. Our Father in Heaven, we ask that you would come now and give us your Spirit, Lord, that we might understand what you have to say for us, that we might hear it, that we might receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and treasure it in our lives for the sake of Jesus Christ. We ask for your Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, last week in the evening, we looked at the first four verses of the book of Hebrews, and the writer had said a number of things about the special Son whom God has spoken through. And now he turns to, in these last few verses of the chapter, this last half, to kind of back up what he’s been saying with some quotes from the Old Testament.

    This passage picks up some of the themes that we looked at last week, and I’ve entitled this message, Heavenly Hierarchy, because the passage that we’re looking at this morning talks about angels and their place in relation to God, the Son, and us. And I want to look at four actions that we see in this passage. In this passage, we’ll see that God says, the angels serve, the Son loves, and we inherit. So starting off looking at God says, I remember a number of years ago, there was a church near our house that we would drive by sometimes, and it had this big banner up, God is still speaking, don’t put a period where God put a comma. Now I would agree with that sentiment on its face, we shouldn’t alter God’s word, but unfortunately in this case, it was clear they were talking about God’s word, the Bible, being a fine place to start, but that we need a more recent prophetic revelation from God, presumably that you would get at that church.

    The writer of Hebrews would agree with the first part of that church sign, God is still speaking, God definitely is still speaking, but instead of setting the Bible aside, Hebrews would say that God still speaks through his word. Sadly this church had missed that God still speaks through his word today, God did speak in the past through his word, but he also currently speaks through his word. And before we consider the content in this passage of what God says, I want to make sure we don’t miss the big picture. By considering the opening words, God says, it’s so obvious it’s easy to miss it, and you may not realize this at first, but the way that Hebrews quotes the Old Testament throughout this passage is actually an unusual way to quote the Old Testament. In most of the New Testament, when scripture is quoted, it’s introduced by the phrase, it is written, Jesus himself uses that phrase all the time whenever he introduced a quote from the Old Testament, but the writer of Hebrews quotes the Old Testament as, God says, not merely said, but he says.

    Just to be clear, we shouldn’t think that there’s a conflict between Jesus and Hebrews. Instead we should ask, what is the writer of Hebrews trying to highlight for us here? While it may be obvious or something we tend to take for granted, we should not overlook the way in which the inspired writer of Hebrews considers that scripture, which was written thousands of years ago, is as relevant now as if God had spoken it for the first time today. There’s lots of people who are looking for a fresh word from God or a word from God for today, and they hardly open their Bibles. Hebrews is instructing us on how we ought to approach the scripture and see its ongoing relevance in our lives. The God who inspired Moses, David, and all the other writers of the Old Testament lives and speaks to us today.

    He speaks through what he has written, and we should not merely approach the Bible as an old, dead document, which is at our mercy to dissect and assign meaning to at our pleasure. This is what God is saying to us today. So God says, but let’s take a look at, in our passage, what God says. The writer of Hebrews is building off of what he had said in verse 4 that we looked at last Sunday night. He’s making the point, the Son is superior to the angels. We’ll try to get a general sense of where these quotes are from and the main point they’re making before circling back to look at a couple of these quotes in detail. First, in verses 5, we see the unique relationship which Christ has with God. God says, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

    Now, we read earlier in the service where that comes from, from Psalm 100 and from Psalm 2, but you can hear the tenderness of this relationship. There’s something special about the bond between a son and a father, and this human bond that we see is actually modeled after God’s relationship with his son. Psalm 2 verse 7 is what we read this morning, and we see that God is jealous and proud of his son. But then the next quote, I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son, comes from 2 Samuel, and it comes in the context of a promise that God made to David. We see here, God promises personally to be a father to David’s son. What a comforting promise, and David surely didn’t understand fully when it was made what it meant, but we can see now that it was fulfilled beyond David’s wildest dreams in Jesus who’s the son of David, a human and also the son of God.

    Angels, on the other hand, as we see in verse 6, while servants in the presence of God, never receive the intimate exalted title of son. We see that angels are commanded to worship the son. Now, we shouldn’t be confused by the term firstborn in verse 6. It’s not saying that Jesus is created by God or that he’s born as God. It’s referring to him as the greatest or the most privileged. That’s what firstborn means in this context. We might recall that the angels proclaimed Christ’s birth in his manger to the shepherds. They came celebrating. Or we might also consider the fact that when he comes again, Christ will return in glory with surrounded by his angels. The son is the center of their attention. They are praising him, not the other way around. But then speaking of angels, verse 7, we see a quote from Psalm 104 to remind us that not only do angels worship the son, but they are simply ministering spirits.

    They’re spiritual beings, not described as rulers, but as serving as those who do the bidding of God. Next, in verse 8, we see that the son is explicitly called the title we’ve been assuming all along, God. Hebrews calls him God directly. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. Well, at first, this directly calling the son God makes it clear that the son truly is God. As the quote continues, it reminds us of the complexity of the incarnation and the Trinity. The father is God. The son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. And yet, as we see in verse 9, it says, therefore God, your God, has anointed you. Because Jesus is at once God, the anointed and sent one by God. He is God, and yet he has been sent by God, fully God and fully man.

    And we cannot fully understand or explain this mystery. And then, as the titles go on, we see in verse 10, a further step. The son, who’s been identified as God, is now identified as creator and Lord. If we look in the Old Testament, we find that this term, Lord, is the most prevalent name for God. But then, when we come into the New Testament epistles, we find that one of their favorite ways to refer to Christ is our Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes, they even leave off the Jesus Christ and just refer to him as our Lord. And while the Old Testament was most often referring to the father with the term Lord, in the New Testament, it becomes the most common way to refer to the father. It’s the same way to refer to the son.

    See, everything that can be ascribed to the father, the Lord, the eternal creator of heaven and earth, who will one day bring this age to an end, can also be said of the son. Now, at this point, you may want to tell me that you already know that. You weren’t doubting it. You weren’t calling it into question. But do you know where to take someone who’s questioning whether Jesus is fully divine when you’re talking to the Jehovah’s Witness that knocks on your door? Or if you have a Muslim neighbor that you’re having a discussion with who considers Jesus was a great teacher, a good man, but not fully divine? One of the places you can take them is Hebrews, Chapter 1, where very clearly Jesus is given the titles of God and even Lord. Lord, which is the same as Jehovah, the personal covenant name of God.

    He’s fully God. And finally, the seventh statement that we see in verse 13 is the quote from Psalm 110, which is probably the most famous Messianic Psalm. Now, if you’re not familiar with the term, Messianic Psalm is a term that people use to talk about one of the Psalms that clearly speaks about the future Messiah. Messiah, obviously, is just a Hebrew word for Christ, which means anointed one. So a Messianic Psalm is a Psalm that speaks about the individual, a coming individual who will be anointed by God, the Messiah, who would bring deliverance to God’s people. Now, we’ll see Psalm 110 get expounded a lot more in the rest of the book of Hebrews. So we’ll visit it again later and we won’t spend a lot of time on it here. But the point here is what we talked about last evening about the son sits down.

    The son is given permission to sit. Now, this is both a sign of his royalty, since only kings can sit down, but it also indicates that his work is done. The angels aren’t done their work. They are not invited to sit. The servants stay standing in the presence of the king, but the son has been told, sit at my right hand while I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Sit while your enemies are subdued. Which brings us from the God says to the fact that angels serve. Angels serve, they serve God, and as we’ll see, they also serve us. And we’ve been talking about angels in this passage in comparison to the son. And the author’s case is clearly made that the angels are not exalted like the son. But then the question arises, why focus on angels?

    Now, there are some people that think there was a unique problem with angel worship that Hebrews is trying to address, but the rest of the book doesn’t spend much time talking about them. So it’s hard to make that case. The fact is, angels are cool. They’re also mysterious. They’ve been the subject of lots of speculation. Angels show up all over the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. We find them delivering messages from God, enacting his judgment like on the Egyptians or Sodom and Gomorrah, and most of all, worshiping God. People have been fascinated with angels all throughout history, and there’s lots we could explore, but we can’t get into it all right now. We don’t have detailed descriptions of what they look like in Scripture, but their most common greeting whenever they show up is, do not fear.

    This makes me think that their presence is terrifying. And yet, on the other hand, in Hebrews 13, we’re going to see later, it says that it’s possible to invite them into your home without even realizing they’re angels. So they probably don’t look like aliens. They probably look like your average male human, normal. But they do come directly from God’s presence. Remember how Moses’ face glowed when he talked with God, and it scared the people, so he had to wear a veil? Perhaps it’s something like that. They’re often described as shining with glory. So perhaps this is why people fear them. Angels are beings which dwell in heaven. They dwell in the closest proximity to God. They operate as his direct reports. This understandably instilled a sense of reverence in the Jews, because angels give messages straight from God.

    We saw in our passage from Daniel, when Gabriel showed up with a message from God. And think about the Lord’s Prayer that we recited when it says, May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The implication is that in heaven, there’s no delaying, no questioning, no disobeying of God when he gives orders in heaven. Now we don’t know how many angels there are, but Jesus tells his disciples that if he didn’t want to go to the cross, he could have asked for 12 legions of angels, which would be about 72,000. So there’s at least that many, probably a lot more. The term angel that we use comes from the Greek word angelos, which basically means messenger, and it can be translated as either angel specifically or messenger in general. It can sometimes be used to refer to a normal human who comes to carry a message.

    Now despite the fact that angels show up all over the Bible, we aren’t given that many details about them. We see them in Revelation especially associated with God’s presence, and we see them at different points in history to deliver important messages directly from God. The one angel everyone knows his name is called Gabriel. He gets some special messages to deliver. You noticed in our reading from Daniel that when Daniel was getting discouraged in the exile, Gabriel came to assure him that deliverance was coming. And then a few hundred years later, he shows up to a man named Zechariah, a priest in the temple, to tell him John the Baptist is going to be born. And a few months after that, he shows up to a woman named Mary to tell her that Jesus is going to be born.

    He had some pretty important messages, but we don’t really have the names of almost any other angel. Now another reason, primary reason perhaps, why the writer would have mentioned angels here is because we read in Acts 7, for instance, from Stephen’s sermon that the law was delivered by angels. Now the Jews, they rightly held Moses in high regard as the giver of the law, but it says the law was delivered by angels. So it was angels that actually, you might say, handed the Ten Commandments to Moses. And in the very next chapter, Chapter 2 of Hebrews, the author is going to talk about that even more. This contrast between angels and the sun that we’ve seen throughout the verses this morning parallels the contrast the writer made in verse 1 and 2 between the prophets and the sun.

    See, the contrast between the sun and angels is a contrast between the Old Covenant and the New. The Old Covenant, the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, was delivered by angels, and yet we’re reminded this morning that angels, though glorious heavenly beings, have never been as intimate with God as the sun, nor exalted to be called God and sit on His throne as the sun was. They are glorious servants of God, but they’re only His servants. And as we move on, I want to see that the sun loves. I want to return to a quote in verse 8 and 9 that we see here in the middle. But of the sun, he says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.

    Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. This little phrase, therefore, has intrigued me ever since I stopped to consider it. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. I admit it sounds perhaps unremarkable at first. Love righteousness, hate wickedness, oil of gladness. Sounds like great poetic language. But then I began to ask, what would that look like? To be happy beyond all of your companions. Loving righteousness, hating wickedness seems pretty common sense. Who wouldn’t, right? But then notice the result. Greater joy than any of his companions. Jesus is happier than anyone he knows. And he knows everyone. So he’s happier than everyone. So he’s happier than everyone. So he’s happier than everyone. And this comes from him loving something and hating something else.

    If his joy comes from loving righteousness and hating wickedness, and he’s happier than anyone else, it must be because he loves righteousness and hates wickedness more than anyone else. How often or how much do you and I love righteousness? Do you eagerly obey God in all things? Any begrudging? Considering the commandments of God as burdensome? Or think about the other side of the coin. How much do you truly hate wickedness? I find when I look in my own heart, I can often find an apathy towards sin. I often only half-heartedly fight against sin. It’s so easy to have pet sins. Disobediences that we hide away in the closet. Sins which we tell ourselves we would never allow to grow to full flower. Just not ready to kill them off quite yet. Remember that even though tigers are cute when they’re babies, they grow up to kill you.

    When it comes to sin, we have to become cold-blooded killers. Infant sins quickly grow up to take over our hearts and warp our perspectives, making us less and less likely to want to kill them later. The son we read loved righteousness. He hated wickedness. He hated wickedness with a pure, absolute, intense hatred. You and I do not hate sin nearly enough. That’s partly because we can’t see how bad it is. The insidious nature of sin is that it actually blinds us to its own evil. Now we could describe sin in a variety of ways. Treason, rebellion, disobedience, an affront to God. But perhaps the most poignant way to describe it would be as an embrace and treasuring of all that God hates. And this is why it’s most commonly portrayed in Scripture as spiritual adultery.

    It’s not just the desire to do our own thing, to be our own person apart from God, which would be bad enough. But when we choose what God has expressly forbidden or fail to obey what he has expressly commanded at its root, this is embracing and entangling ourselves with another lover while we’re pledged to God. Despite all of the confusion in our culture today around sexuality, there remains a sense that betrayal between lovers is wrong. You don’t cheat on your spouse. God uses the image of betrayal to help us understand something about sin. That betrayal is all the worse when the other party is completely innocent. And while in human relationships we rarely find one party completely without fault, in our relationship with God he is completely without fault. He deserves our complete undying devotion.

    That would be the bare minimum that his holiness and goodness towards us deserves. He deserves our highest affection. And when we sin, we’re cheating on God. And it’s always with an inferior partner. We like to think of sin as a little mistake, a lapse of judgment, but in reality it’s always personal. It’s a betrayal to the one who gives definition to faithfulness. If we were to really grasp what this meant, we would not think of hell as an unjust punishment for sin. Awful, yes, but unjust, no. The eternal punishment that God justly meets out upon sin gives us a glimpse into its true evil. Yet that is not the only way that we can glimpse the evil of sin. The other way is in the cost of atonement. Because in God’s mercy, he determined to save some from bearing this awful, dreadful punishment for their own sins.

    The son of God who became man, who never once entertained a sinful thought, who loved righteousness with an unmatched ferocity, and utterly hated sin with his whole heart, went to the cross. He who knew no sin became sin for us, suffering the punishment for sins that he would never have entertained in his wildest dreams, so that we could become the righteousness of God and be graciously given all the privileges that only he merited. We see the son loves. Jesus went to the cross out of love. He makes clear that he went to the cross out of love for his father and also out of love for us. So finally we see in this passage that we inherit. We inherit salvation. The last verse of our passage, Hebrews 1.14, are they not all ministering spirits, talking about angels, sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?

    This verse really is quite amazing. The writer’s been focused on contrasting angels with the son. His contrast has assumed that angels are very glorious and very exalted. We’ve seen that they’re spiritual creatures who are without sin and serve directly in God’s presence, and are often commissioned with direct messages from God. But the final point of contrast between the son and the angels is that the angels are actually made to serve, made to be the servants of believers. In the next chapter we’re going to see the writer of Hebrews remind us of Psalm 8, in which David considers mankind, which is a little lower than the angels. We might be inclined to think that we as humans ought to be serving the angels. They’re the glorious ones in God’s presence. We’re merely the lowly, sinful human creatures, and yet instead we see just the opposite.

    The writer concludes this chapter with a reminder that God is so kind, so gracious, has gone out of His way to make us the unexpected objects of His incomprehensible love, that He has commissioned His own personal heavenly servants to ensure we get everything we need to inherit salvation. Now, there’s a right way to look at this, and there’s a wrong way to look at this. The wrong way would be to think that, look at us, we must be pretty something special, because God’s made us the center of His saving work. The wrong way to think that this has something to do with who we are inherently. And the Bible is clear. It says nothing to do with who we are. The right way to take this is to see that it has everything to do with who God is.

    God is not highlighting our worth, but His grace, that He would be so extravagant to such undeserving creatures as us. Now, consider the phrase, inherit salvation. That should make us think about what it means to inherit. To inherit something would be the opposite of earning it, opposite of deserving it. An inheritance is an absolutely free gift, given by the one who gives it. It is impossible to deserve or to earn an inheritance. It can only be given and received, cannot be bought or earned. And notice how the writer of Hebrews describes believers, those who are to inherit salvation. If you look at the children of rich men and women, billionaires, millionaires and billionaires, there’s often an understanding that sooner or later that child will be the recipient of an enormous gift. They’re entitled and they’re certain to receive something they’ve not fully received yet.

    And that’s what life is like for us as Christians. You might hear people speak about how salvation is, how we’re living in the already but not yet. And this is what, partly what we’re talking about. There are things we’ve already received, justification, adoption, sanctification, but there are things that are yet to be, ours as heirs of God. There’s still more to come. This is why we must live by faith. Our full deliverance from sin is still on the horizon. We are free from the power of sin now, but not free from the presence of sin. For now, we daily repent when we fall. We ask for a greater hatred for sin, a greater love for righteousness knowing we’re not on our own. We look to Jesus, who loves us so much that he’s commanded the angels at his disposal to serve us as we follow him on the path to our inheritance.

    What a comforting thought. You know, Satan quoted falsely to Jesus, Psalm 91, about he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. Jesus rebuked Satan, but the reality was true. God has commanded his angels. Some of you may know this conservative Scottish theologian named John Murray. And there’s a story one day of him walking into a class that he was about to teach of his students and calmly matter-of-factly remarked, an angel stopped my car this morning. He had one glass eye and had trouble driving and seeing where he was going and a car had run a red light in front of him and he swears that he never put his foot on the brake, and yet God preserved him. God preserved his life. He believed, as Hebrews says, that God has his angels taking care of us.

    As we close, have you considered the vast numbers of angels that God has commissioned at his servants to aid you in your Christian life? Now, we’re never told to pray to angels or to order them around. They report directly to God. But we should take comfort that God has directed them to care for us. Jesus himself throughout his ministry was helped and served by angels. From directly following his temptations by Satan in the wilderness, we see the angels show up ministering to him. To his night in the Garden of Gethsemane, angels show up and strengthen Jesus in his weakness. God has commissioned the same angels who ministered to Jesus in his times of weakness on earth to also guard, watch over, serve, and see you through your Christian life as you follow Jesus by faith.

    Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have exalted your son. You have given him a name above all names. You have intimate fellowship with him. You have sent him to die in our place, to give us forgiveness of sins as we look to him, trust him by faith, and that you have commissioned your angels to watch over, care for us as we live looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Pray that you would aid us in this. You would help us to take comfort in these words, in these truths that you have given us from your word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Revelation of God’s Son

    The Revelation of God’s Son

    About this sermon

    Hebrews opens by contrasting how God spoke long ago through the prophets with how he has spoken in these last days through his Son. The Son is heir of all things, the one through whom God made the ages, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of his nature. He upholds the universe by his word, and after making purification for sins he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. New covenant believers have far greater access to God, and they must treasure and believe this good news.

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Amen. Well, if you would remain standing, we’ll be reading from God’s Word in the Book of Hebrews. We’ll be reading the first four verses of chapter one. Hear now the Word of God. May be seated. May be seated. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we would ask that you would come with your Spirit. You have preserved the words that we read for centuries, even millennia. And you have brought them to us tonight, but we need your Spirit that we might understand them, that they might be life-giving to us. So we ask that you would come with your Spirit, that these would be your words that are spoken, and they would be received with faithful, thankful hearts that can hear their shepherd’s voice, ready to rejoice and submit to what you are saying to your people tonight.

    We ask that you would come by your Spirit, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, since I intend to be here for a little while, rather than picking a random passage every single week, I’ve decided to take us through a little series of the Book of Hebrews. There’s many people that could take more than a year to even go through this book, since it’s so rich. I don’t intend to do that. I would like to at least give us an overview of this book, even though we won’t dig deeply into all of the passages. I’d like to hopefully give us a sense of what this book is about, and why God has put it in His Scriptures, and why it’s important for our lives. That means that before we really dive into these first few verses, I want to take a look first at this letter that we call the Letter to the Hebrews.

    Before we get into the book, we need to see what we know about the human author. When he wrote, where he wrote, and to whom did he write. This is one of the New Testament letters that we know less about than usual. We don’t even know for sure who the author is. There have been a few main guesses throughout church history, namely Paul, or Barnabas, or Apollos, or Luke. Although Paul has been a popular choice throughout history, when we compare this letter to the rest of his letters that we have, it’s hard to believe that he would have written a letter without identifying himself as the author. And the writing style is also very different than the other 13 letters that we have that we know are Paul’s. So that kind of takes him out of the picture.

    As for Barnabas, we don’t really know much about him, but the impression that we get in Acts is that he’s more of a doer and an encourager, rather than a writer and a speaker. For instance, in Acts 14, when him and Paul, Barnabas and Paul, are encountered by the pagans, Barnabas they called Zeus and Paul Hermes because Paul was the chief speaker. I personally like the idea of Apollos having written this book, since he sounds like the kind of person who would have written a book like Hebrews. In Acts 18, we have a description of him, verses 24 through 28. We have now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures, and he greatly helped those who through greats had believed. For he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.

    So this to me sounds a little like someone who could have written such a book as Hebrews. But the fact is we have no other writings that we know are attributed to Apollos to compare. So it is hard to say one way or the other. Now, Luke has been suggested by some, but largely ignored or dismissed for a while since he was assumed to be a Gentile because of his focus in the books that he wrote, Luke and Acts, on the promises going to the Gentiles and his very eloquent use of Greek in his other works. However, some scholars have recently pointed out, one, it doesn’t follow that because you see the gospel going to the Jews and because you’re good at Greek, doesn’t mean you are not a Jew. The Septuagint was written in Greek for the Jews.

    And Luke’s writing has a distinctively Septuagint flavor of Greek. Kind of like if someone has been reading the King James version for a long time and they start saying these and those in their regular speech. That’s the way that Luke’s writing shows up when he’s writing his gospel in Greek. So there are a few people that think that Hebrews shows a similar sophistication of the Greek language and specific knowledge and use of the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, just as Luke and Acts do, which might suggest that Luke could have been the author of Hebrews. I’m intrigued by this possibility, but we don’t have an inspired definite attribution, so we really can’t be certain. If Luke were indeed the author, though, it would fit with a couple of other aspects with this letter, such as the likely place it was written and the likely date it was written.

    If we turn to the end of Hebrews in Chapter 13, we find a little bit of information. It says, You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you soon if he comes. Those who come from Italy send you greetings. The phrase those from Italy strongly suggests that this letter was written from Italy, most likely Rome. Then the mention of Timothy, who’s probably the Timothy that we know from Acts as Paul’s companion, gives us some more information about the author, audience, and possible date of writing. Now, we don’t have any record of Timothy being imprisoned in the book of Acts or any of Paul’s epistles, but in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, which was his last, he asked him to come visit him in Rome. So it’s quite possible that Timothy did visit Paul in Rome and got put in prison in connection with that visit.

    The writer calls him our brother Timothy, implying that this Timothy was well known and loved by both the author and his audience, making it likely that someone like Luke, who was in Paul’s close circle of companions. Another clue to the date of the writing of this epistle is the way that it talks about the temple, as though the sacrifices are still happening there, which would have been strange to say if the temple had already been destroyed, as it was in AD 70. While we can’t be sure, it seems like a reasonable guess to say that this letter was written from Rome by a close friend of Timothy and Paul in the late 60s, since Paul was killed in AD 66 and the temple was destroyed in AD 70. Now, as for the audience, they apparently knew Timothy as well as the author, and they’re assumed to be believers.

    We can’t say much more for sure, but based on the content of the letter and the knowledge that the author assumes that they have, this letter has traditionally been called the letter to the Hebrews. Some scholars have gone even further to suggest that it could be a community of believers who were temple priests formerly. In Acts, it says a great number of the priests believed. This might help explain the heavy focus on the priesthood of Christ in the letter, as well as the pains that the author takes to demonstrate the New Covenant’s superior privileges and access to God. If you think about the fact that the Jewish priests who became believers went from being privileged leaders in the temple sacrifices to just another member of the congregation, Hebrews 13.10 makes a little more sense when it says, We have an altar from which those who serve at the tent have no right to eat.

    This would have been especially important for former priests to remember if they were tempted to return to their former occupation. Also in Hebrews 5.12, the writer says that his audience ought to be teachers. It was the priests who were commissioned in the Old Testament to teach the law to the people of God. Ultimately, we can’t be certain. So why speculate then? Why not just jump right into an examination of the text? While we do need to be careful about not being dogmatic about speculations, we need to remember that God’s word, while being God-breathed, was also written down by human authors in history. Unlike the other holy books that can be helpful, regardless of whether or not they’re true, the Bible ties its truth about history to its doctrinal claims. In this way, it’s the most disprovable religion in the world.

    But as I’ve told people on the boardwalk who question the Bible’s authority, the Bible has been attacked more than any other book in the history of the world by those attempting to discredit it. And to this day, they have all failed. Frankly, I actually talked to a young man this summer, and I offered him a Gospel of John. And when I told him who wrote it, one of Jesus’ disciples, when it was probably written, his eyes lit up. He’s like, you mean this was written in history? And I get to read this? He was so excited to read something, realizing that it wasn’t just a book of sayings. It was rooted in history. See, other religions offer books written by a single author in an unfalsifiable format, which means you really can’t confirm whether they’re true or not.

    But the Bible uniquely stakes its truth on verifiable history. If Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, don’t believe anything else he said either. But since we know that he did, everything he said is of utmost importance. Now, this leads us right into a consideration of our passage this evening, because the writer of the Hebrews wants us to pay close attention to what God has said. Now, he’s going to make that explicit in chapter 2, but before he gets there, he’s going to introduce the speaker. Have you ever been to a conference with a bunch of speakers? They all have a poster or a brochure with a little bio under their picture, a paragraph or two giving background on the speakers. Usually it will talk about degrees they’ve earned in the past, who this speaker is, something about his or her family, where he or she lives, their hobbies, what they’ve done or they’re doing, an organization they’re heading up or participating in, and what they’ve written or where they’ve spoken.

    And that’s what the author of Hebrews is doing here for us. The writer of Hebrews tells us that God’s final word, his Son, is special in seven glorious ways that can be organized under three headings. Jesus was, he is, and he has. He was appointed the heir of all things and the one who created all things, because he is the visible image and glory of God who sustains all things, and because he has done, he’s made purification for sins. He has sat down and received a supremely exalted name. Now before we get to look at this Son by whom God has spoken, consider for a moment the important reality that God is a speaking God. Our passage highlights God’s primary means of revelation, which was the prophets. Now I’ve sometimes heard unbelievers suggest that if they could just hear God speaking directly, maybe they’d believe he’s real.

    I’ve also heard believers question, why doesn’t he speak to us directly? One of the answers to that question is that God, when God spoke to Israel directly, they thought they were going to die. So God’s direct speech might not be the reassuring event that you’re assuming it will be. Look for a moment at Exodus 20, verses 18 through 21. Here we see the beginning of the role of the prophet. That’s Exodus 20, 18 through 21. Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountains smoking, the people were afraid and trembled. They stood far off and said to Moses, you speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you that you may not sin.

    The people stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. God tells Moses he’s not offended or surprised that the people were scared to death of the unmediated speech of God. It served to instill a healthy fear in the people of God and help them understand the need and purpose of a prophet to speak to them on behalf of God. If we turn further in Deuteronomy 18, we find Moses summarizing the prophet’s role. In Deuteronomy 18, 15 through 19, when you said, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more lest I die. And the Lord said to me, they are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak all that I command him.

    And whoever will not listen to the words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. The opening words of Hebrews 1 remind us that ever since Moses, God has spoken through prophets. But the author’s point is not to dwell on this, but rather to contrast it with the way that God has spoken now. This final period, these last days. The past was various, various times, various ways mediated through prophets. The point is not to cast any doubt on the authority of the revelation in the past, but to highlight the piecemeal and distant nature of it and compare it with the singularity and intimacy of God speaking now by his Son. Now by prophets, the writer is making reference to the whole of what we would call the Old Testament, not just the prophetic books.

    For instance, in Luke 24, it says, I am beginning with Moses and all the prophets. It means the Old Testament. Jesus interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Or in 2 Peter, Peter says in chapter 1 verse 19, We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Knowing this first of all that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of men, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So the prophets who spoke, they had met with God. But now, long ago, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but now God speaks through his Son.

    So who is this Son? Well, a quick word about Greek grammar here in reference to the Son. In Greek, the word son doesn’t have the his or the the in the original that lots of English translations supply. But that’s because it’s hard to convey this meaning succinctly. In Greek, it’s much clearer. Because the author is not trying to say just some son or any son that God spoke through. But he omits the the in order to focus on the quality, the son as a different category. He’s trying to talk about the son as a category or quality in contrast to prophet. Sort of how we might say music when we want to talk about it as a quality rather than the music when we’re talking about specific music. So the writer has a specific son in mind, which is why the ESV says his son.

    But the Greek, the writer is highlighting son as a category all on his own. The quality in which God is now revealing himself. So first we see two things in our passage in verse two. Two things that the son was. First, he was appointed the heir of all things. Now as heir of all things, what’s in view here is not so much the idea that the son is receiving things in the future. Which is what we often think of as heir. We think of inheritance, things you get when the possessor dies. Instead think of the heir in this case as the heir of a company founder or better the crown prince. Remember in the parables Jesus told of the vineyard owner how he sent his servants to collect the rent. Owned by the tenants, owed him by the tenants, but eventually he sent his son saying they will respect my son.

    And of course in the parable the wicked tenants actually killed the son instead of respecting him. But they understood that he was the heir. Now as the heir of all things, as the crown prince, the son through whom God has spoken, bears all the authority and dignity of God himself. This of course means that the son is God himself. Since God explicitly states that he will share his glory with no one else. In the past God spoke through his servants authoritatively. It was still God who spoke by the prophets. But now he has spoken by the crown prince himself. Not a courtier or a duke or a baron or a diplomat, but the heir of all things. The crown prince himself who owns and rules everything. Think of the scene at Christ’s baptism when the voice from heaven speaks.

    This is my son in whom I am utterly delighted or well pleased. Or at his transfiguration on the mountain when the voice adds, listen to him. When the heir of all things speaks, God speaks. But then next the writer says that he was the one through whom God created the world. In case we’re tempted to think that the heir of all things was appointed arbitrarily or late in the game, we’re reminded that this son doesn’t just own and rule all things, but he created all things. The word world here is not actually the normal Greek word cosmos, but it’s a word that is often translated age or eternity. Now this doesn’t mean that world is a bad translation. It just means that the writer is highlighting that the son didn’t just create physical reality, but both space and time.

    Everything. As John 1 verse 3 says, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that has been made. If God did not speak, not only would we not know anything about him, quite literally we would not exist. God’s acts of creation are commands that things come into existence. Let there be light. And that amazing phrase, it was so. God is a God who speaks to reveal himself. His first act in history was a command. Genesis 1-3, and God said, let there be light, and there was light. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God spoke into the formless and lightless void, commanding that illumination, light, exist, that it come into existence. That is real authority and real power. God’s power in nature is such that he can create things by commanding them to exist.

    God’s creation is part of God revealing himself. That’s why the heavens are said to be speaking, telling, proclaiming the glory of God. What God has spoken into existence as a revelation is what he is like. The heavens are enormous. We measure distance in space, not by kilometers or miles, but by how far light, the fastest thing we know, can travel for 365 days at full speed. A single light year is about 5,880,000,000,000 miles long. So one of the things that the universe tells us is that God must be big and must be powerful. Romans 1, 20, for God’s invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So the son was. He was appointed the heir and creator of all things, but this is because of who he is.

    So the son is two things. This is in verse three. In verse three, he is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of his nature. Now, while this may seem like two things, radiance and imprint, I think it’s meant to be two ways of looking at a single reality. When we read John 1, 14, as we did earlier, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. We have seen his glory. Glory is of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. And then verse 18, no one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the father’s side, he has made him known. This word translated as radiance is a little challenging to get a concrete grasp on, especially because it’s talking about the Trinity and how the members relate to each other.

    But if we think about the sun as a source of light, we don’t technically see the sun with our eyes. We see its rays. If the sun did not give off light, we could not see it. Now, one of the ways this analogy breaks down is that the sun is not invisible, but God is invisible. This is why I think the idea of image or imprint is a helpful way at getting at the same reality. John says no one has ever seen God, which makes perfect sense. He’s a spirit and does not have a body like men. But we can see Jesus, who has a body like men. But instead of Scripture saying that even if you’ve seen Jesus, you still have no idea what God is like, Jesus says things like in John 14, verse 9, Jesus said to them, Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip?

    Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Jesus is the most accurate, visible representation of God, because he is God. He doesn’t just look like God or act like God or sound like God or smell like God. He’s the exact imprint of his nature, the very brilliance, the very shining rays of the glory of God. And this is what sets the Son in a totally different category from the prophets. He doesn’t just visibly, who didn’t visibly verbally represent God. Jesus is the Son of God. He’s Son of God. He’s the same essence, the very nature, the same as the Father. If you’ve seen the Son, you’ve seen the Father. For Jesus says in John 14, 10, Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

    The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works, his works. The work that the writer of Hebrews is highlighting is what we find next, which is the upholding of all things by his powerful word. You could say it the word of his power or we might easier say his powerful word. Now the word translated upholds has both the sense of guiding or of sustaining, but I think the writer of Hebrews has both in mind. Think of Colossians 1.16. For by Christ, the Son, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him, as we just saw, and for him. We already saw in the previous verse how the Son created all things.

    Now the focus is on the purpose towards which he is guiding all things and the way in which he continues to sustain them. Contrary to those who will admit that this world must have had a designer, but then assert that chaos and evil in this world are evidence that no one is in charge, Hebrews 1 asserts God the Son is intimately involved in guiding and sustaining all things. And he does this by the same means that he created all things, by his powerful word. As he commanded all things into existence, he maintains the same power and authority over all that he has created. Think of Christ’s calming and inanimate storm while he rode through it with his disciples. At a single word, peace, be still. At his word, the winds and the waves that he created were instantly docile and harmless.

    Of course, the disciples understood that since it was God alone who has that power over the natural elements, this was undeniable evidence that Jesus was nothing less than God Almighty. Which is also the author of Hebrews point here. All things are to him and through him and for him. But the author of Hebrews has something more that he wants to highlight in the next phrases. See, the Son was appointed the heir and creator because he is the exact image and sustainer of all. And since based on what he has done, he’s done, he’s made purification for sins, he sat down and inherited a name above all names. So thirdly, the Son, we might say, has done two things and become or received a third. So first, made purification for sins. This one little phrase carries an ocean of significance in it.

    And in many ways, the rest of the book of Hebrews will be an expansion on how he did this and what it means for us. At this point, the author introduces it as something that was done on the way to somewhere, to something else. See, the main verb in this is he sat down. In the next phrase, this is introduced, yet we see it here as the whole reason that he had come to earth to make purification for sins. He became a man to take care of sins. The language, make purification, is priest language. Sin makes sinners cosmically filthy, filthy and powerless to remedy the situation. The people of Israel would bring their sacrifice for sin, but it was the priest who had to offer that sacrifice. The priest who had to kill the lamb or slaughter the bull and then carefully presented to God to make purification for their sins.

    We stand filthy and guilty before God for our cosmic treason of living for ourselves instead of submitting to his law. One of the reasons God spoke by the prophets was because the pervading sin of the people provoked God’s wrath. Coming into God’s presence meant coming as one who was stained to the soul level with all that God hated most deeply. The prophets provided a necessary buffer between the people and God, as did the priests. In the past, if God were to speak directly, the terror it evoked tended to exclude any sense of intimacy that it might otherwise be felt. Yet now, God speaks to us intimately without evoking the previously felt terror, because the son who speaks to us is also the one who has made purification for sins. If it were not so, it would be no comfort that God speaks to us directly in the person of his son.

    But he made purifications on the way to sitting down. He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Now, what does it mean to say that the son sat down? Did he need to take a load off? Was he tired? I’ve seen two different film adaptations of the old book by Mark Twain called The Prince and the Popper. And while they differ in very several respects from each other, the important detail that they both share is that the prince bestows upon the man who saves his life while he’s dressed as a pauper named Miles Hendon. Now, being a man of simple pleasures, Miles asks merely for the privilege of sitting in the presence of the king. The first time he makes use of this privilege, everyone around him scolds him and immediately tries to prevent him from remaining seated in the presence of the king without permission.

    But then the prince steps in and informs that Miles has indeed been granted that right. While that is a lighthearted example, it highlights the fact that sitting is a sign of royalty, especially to be seated at the right hand of majesty, the majesty on high. For the son came to sit down at the right hand of the majesty on high means that he was enthroned. So he sits because he’s king, but also because he has finished his work. The priests in the Old Testament never sat down. They were never done. But after Christ made purification for sins, he sat down. His purifying work was complete. He cleansed them once and for all. After offering the ultimate sacrifice of all sacrifices, he made complete purification for sins and sat down. We might say that he made a name for himself.

    In classic Hebrew style, the writer states things in a roundabout way. As we work through this book, we’ll find this type of complicated phrasing quite common. Verse four, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. As much as. There’s a comparison here. The son, after making purification for sins, sat down having become something. He’s become superior to angels to the same degree in which his name is better than theirs. Now, what’s this name that is referred to? Well, it could be Jesus or Lord or numerous other titles equating him with God. But it seems to be running parallel to the idea in verse one and two in which the son is contrasted with the prophets. God spoke by the prophets to his people, but he’s also he’s used angels as messengers as well.

    In fact, both Greek and Hebrew, the word for angel also means messenger. Now, we’re also going to see the author spend the rest of chapter one, demonstrating how none of the angels are called God’s son in the way that Christ is. So I think the author here is talking about the distance between the name son and angel, which is the distance between creature and creator, which is to say infinite distance. In Philippians 2.9, we see something similar expressed. Paul says, Therefore God has exalted Christ the son and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. By virtue of the son’s making purification for sins, he has been made the focal point of all creation in all of history.

    We literally count down the years of BC to the point of Jesus or count afterwards years that it’s been since he showed up. And yet rather than obscuring the Father’s glory, we’re reminded in Philippians that this only serves to glorify the Father. This was all done according to the Father’s plan, according to his will, and as a demonstration of the son’s love for the Father. In Hebrews 13.8, it says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And we can see that as paralleling yesterday, Jesus was appointed an heir, creator of all things. And Jesus is the image today, the image and radiance, the exact imprint of God’s nature, upholding the universe by the word of his power. And forever, having made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

    He was appointed heir and creator, he is the image of God who upholds the universe, and he’s made atonement for sins, sat down, and inherited the name above all names. The book of Hebrews has been called the book of the superiority of Christ, and this is certainly a significant theme in this book. But we might want to even say more specifically that this book is about the exponentially more intimate access that the new covenant believers have to God. Peter writes in 1 Peter 1, 10-12, he says, Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully. The prophets, who through God had spoken in many times in many ways, searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

    It was revealed to them that they were serving, not themselves, but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. We now stand in the last days, biblically speaking, the time of God speaking through his prophets in various times, in various ways, his past. He has spoken through his son to us now, calling us to repent and believe the gospel, to listen to the air of all things, who has received an infinitely superior name for the work that he did to make purification for sins. The exhortation is to don’t belittle, don’t neglect, don’t despise, but to submit to, to value, treasure and believe this good news. Because the next event on the biblical timeline is the eminent return of Christ and the judgment of the world.

    The prophets and angels throughout history have been waiting and looking forward to this gospel that we now possess. Let us believe it and share it like it is the best news in the world, because it is. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have spoken by the prophets in many times and in many ways, you have given us the whole Old Testament. And yet we thank you even more that you have spoken to us by your son, the one who has made purification for sins, the one who can give us access to you, that we desperately need, the one who can give us eternal life. Lord, we ask that you would make us to hear him and believe him and to treasure and worship him. Lord, we ask this in Jesus’ name.

    Amen. Well, in response, if you would stand, we’re going to sing for him.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Lifelong Slavery

    Lifelong Slavery

    About this sermon

    Even Christians fear death, because death came as God’s judgment on sin and leads to judgment before God. Hebrews teaches that Christ shared our flesh and blood so that through his death he might destroy the devil, who holds the power of death. Satan tempts sinners and then accuses them, but Christ took on a debt that was not his and destroyed death from the inside. Christ delivers his people from lifelong slavery to the fear of death.

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    We are delighted to welcome this morning Mr. Isaiah English. Just briefly, a little bit about Isaiah. He just recently graduated from Reform Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina with his MDiv. That was just, what, two weeks ago. And then they moved their stuff to the Boardwalk Chapel. He’s spending the summer, he and his wife, Callie, at the Boardwalk Chapel in Wildwood, New Jersey for a summer internship. So we’re glad you took time out of your busy chapel schedule to be with us today. Welcome, brother. Well, good morning. This morning we’ll be reading from, you can see in the bulletin, Hebrews chapter 2. And our passage will be Hebrews 2, verses 14 through 15. But I’m going to read starting in verse 5 to help us see the whole context of this. Join me in prayer, if you would, as we prepare to come and hear God’s word.

    Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have preserved your word for us. You have written it down. We do not need to simply rely on our memory, but you have written it down and preserved it for us. And we need not just the written word, but we need your spirit to illuminate it to our minds and hearts. We need you to open up our hearts that we would believe it, accept it, and it would change our lives. So we ask that you would make us ready and willing to hear, believe, and obey your word. We pray that you would open it up to us for Jesus’ sake this morning. Amen. Amen. Hear now the word of the Lord from Hebrews chapter 2, starting in verse 5. For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come of which we are speaking.

    It has been testified somewhere. What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not see everything in subjection to him, but we see him, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

    For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, behold, I and the children God has given me. Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely, it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

    For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Amen. You may be seated. I’ll just read again the verses we’ll be focusing on is 14 through 15. Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely, it is not angels that he helps, all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. Are you afraid to die? I’m not asking whether you think you ought to be afraid or whether you ought not to. If you were totally honest, are you afraid to die?

    Even for Christians, the prospect of death is often scary if we’re perfectly honest with ourselves. Death involves uncertainty. Very few people facing it have ever experienced it. While some people crave new experiences, that doesn’t usually translate into an eagerness for death. The only ones seeking death are usually looking for an escape from pain and misery. The unknown of death can appear to offer an elusive possibility of relief. There’s a certain dread that death carries. But the fear of death is more than the fear of the dark or the unknown. It has to do with death’s origin and purpose. Death was instituted as a judgment for sin. It’s an unnatural separation that’s foreign to the good order of creation. Adam and Eve first disobeyed God and separated themselves from him spiritually. God said, in the day you eat it, you will die.

    But to demonstrate the spiritual effects of sin, God imposed the curse of physical death on all creation. All mankind will eventually find their spiritual selves separated from the bodies that we commonly call death. The unnatural separation of man’s spiritual and physical realities is a judgment from God. And it’s a picture of what sin does to us spiritually. But even this is not the full picture, because physical death is not the end of our existence. For sinful men, death is their entrance into judgment. To stand before the great judge of all the earth and give an account of the myriad of ways that they have defied the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth and lived for themselves their own rules instead of his, finally to be cast into eternal suffering for their life of sin. So this leaves us, those alive, with an ever-present nagging fear of what comes next.

    The writer of Hebrews calls this slavery, lifelong slavery. But he wants us to see how Jesus came to deliver us from this lifelong slavery. In our passage this morning, Jesus does three things. He partakes in order to destroy. And he destroys in order to deliver. And he delivers in order to free. He partakes of flesh and blood. He destroys the one who has the power of death. And he delivers slaves from bondage. Point number one. Jesus, the first thing he does is he partakes of flesh and blood. In order to deliver rebellious sinners from lifelong slavery of death, Jesus had to start by partaking of flesh and blood. We see this in verse 14. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things. Now what does it mean to say that Jesus partakes of flesh and blood?

    This verse says that the purpose for his partaking was because the children share in flesh and blood. He refers to the children here because the quote from Isaiah 8, verses 18 in Hebrews, verse 13 says, the children God has given me. So the writer is picking up the word children to refer to human beings. If we look down at verses 16 and 17, we see that he’s talking about human beings as opposed to any other creature, not angels. He’s talking about the incarnation. Incarnation comes from the word carne, the Latin, which means flesh. So incarnation means putting on or becoming flesh. The second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, absolutely fully divine, somehow mysteriously took on a full human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. The larger catechism, question 36 says, it asks, who is the mediator of the covenant of grace?

    The answer, the only mediator of the covenant of grace is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God of one substance with the Father in the fullness of time became man. And so was and continues to be both God and man, two distinct natures and one person forever. But it goes on, how did Jesus, the Son of God, become man? Christ, the Son of God, became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary of her substance and born of her yet without sin. And then we have the question, why was it required that the mediator should be God? It was required that the mediator should be God, that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God and the power of death.

    To give worth and efficacy to his sufferings, obedience and intercession, he must be God. And to satisfy God’s justice, procure God’s favor, purchase a peculiar people, and give his spirit to them, conquer all their enemies, and bring them into everlasting salvation, the mediator has to be God. But the mediator also had to be man. Why was it required that the mediator should be man? Answer, it was required that the mediator should be man, that he might help or advance our human nature. He might perform obedience to the law. He might suffer and make intercession for us in our nature. He might have a fellow feeling of our infirmities, that we might receive the adoption of sons and have comfort in our lives. And have comfort and access with boldness onto the throne of grace. Almost all of the proof texts that the catechism cites for why Jesus became man come from the book of Hebrews.

    Jesus became man to have an identical experience with us. Since we experience flesh and blood, since we possess that, since we are humans who have physical and spiritual components subject to the temptation of Satan, Jesus determined to completely identify with us for a number of reasons, but particularly in this passage, in order to die. God cannot die. Yet, in order to deliver his people from the righteous judgment of God for their sin, God must die. So God became man. God took on flesh and blood so that he could give his body, shed his blood to satisfy the wrath of God for sin. There’s a Puritan named John Howe, who says the wrong that man had done to the divine majesty should be expiated by none but man and could be by none but God. Behold then the wonderful conjunction of both one in Emmanuel.

    When we look at verse 17 of our passage, we see this. It says, therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. Jesus took on the same human nature that you and I have. He became a full, complete human. He has eyes, ears, a nose, arms, legs, heart, lungs, feet, toes. Notice I said has, not had. Remember Jesus is not just, did not just become man for a season and then leave behind his body or throw it away. He is forever God and man. He did this to become a merciful high priest who had experienced our weaknesses and sufferings and every single one of our temptations, but also faithful that he resisted every single temptation, every single time, never failing once to fully hate sin and to love righteousness.

    He did this to take away the wrath, to make propitiation, to cause the wrath of God to be poured out against sin in his own death, to observe it fully in himself so there might be none to spill over onto those who are in him. Jesus partook of the same flesh and blood in us, as us. But he did this for a purpose. He did this in order to destroy. And secondly, Jesus destroys the one who has the power of death. There is an older, well-known book that my wife and I listened to a couple years ago, an audio book called Ready Player One. Well, I’m not recommending this book per se since it has some instances of objectionable content. There’s a fascinating scene which I think relates to our passage. In case you’re not familiar with the book, I’ll quickly catch you up on the premise.

    It’s a dystopian novel about a world which has attempted to go entirely virtual, resulting in millions of people sitting around with virtual reality headsets on doing nothing else. The richest man and founder of the company has just died, promising his company to the one who can discover the secret and beat the game that he created. However, there is, of course, a villainous, competitive company who, instead of playing by the rules, has hired or enslaved an army of volunteers or employees to achieve total control of the virtual world. They’re willing to stop at nothing, even killing people in real life in order to get them out of the game. But the protagonist, he realizes the only way to stop this company is to hack into their computers from the inside, from within the company network. But the only way to do that, he has to hack into the government debt record and falsify his own credit record, making it appear as though he were impossibly indebted, prompting them, the company, to capture and enslave him to pay back the debt.

    In order to destroy this company, he ascribes debt to himself, which was not his, willingly enters enslavement in order to hack into the company from the inside so that he can plant a bug that will destroy them. This is what the author of Hebrews is saying Jesus did. He took on a debt of sin that was not his, submitted himself to a death he did not deserve in order to destroy death from the inside. He entered death, something that was completely impossible for God, which is why he became man, so that he could die. But now, why does the writer of Hebrews say, destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil? How does the devil have the power of death? Well, if you would, turn with me to Zechariah 3.

    If you have your Pew Bibles, it’s on page 944. Zechariah 3 is one of the minor prophets, just a little ways back from Matthew in the Old Testament. In Zechariah 3, we have an interesting scene starting in verse 1. It says, then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. Notice what Satan’s role is in this passage. Zechariah has a vision and he sees Joshua, the high priest who’s come back from exile, who’s trying to minister to the people of Israel. In this vision, Joshua is standing before the judgment seat of God. And in this courtroom scene, the prosecutor is Satan. Although Satan is the ultimate liar, he doesn’t even need to lie in this case. Joshua’s sins are clear to see.

    Satan’s making his case. God, you must judge this man. Your holy law, your holy justice demands that you destroy this sinful priest. And send him to hell. Thankfully, in the next verse, we see God step in and defend Joshua. Look down at verse two. And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him. And he said to him, behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you and I will clothe you with pure vestments. In Revelation 12, there’s a battle in heaven and Satan is defeated. And in verse 10, we read, and I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and power and kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come.

    For the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, the one who accuses them night and day before God. Notice how Satan is described. Satan’s greatest power has never been his physical abilities to cause destruction as he did to Job’s sheep, his cattle, his servants, and even his children. There are many places in the world in which people are ruled by fear of demons killing their children, afflicting them with diseases and curses. But this is not where Satan’s greatest power lies. His power lies in his ability to call on God’s condemning justice for your sin. If you remember the story of Job, Satan had to ask permission from God for every destructive action he brought on Job. In every instance, Satan’s power was in attempting to leverage God, to incite God against Job. Satan did everything he could to get Job to sin, knowing that as soon as Job sinned, God’s holiness would obligate him to justly punish him.

    Satan’s entire mission is to get you to sin so that God will be obligated by his holy justice to bring his wrath upon you. Satan will play both sides, tempting you to sin, suggesting it’s not that bad, maybe you can get away with it this time. Yet as soon as you do, he’s dancing with joy as the prosecuting attorney, knowing he’s got a rock-solid case against you. Every instance of temptation from Satan is entrapment. Entrapment is when a law enforcement attempts to secretly enable a person to commit a crime so that then they will have evidence to then prosecute that person for the crime. Satan has no authority to condemn anyone to hell. Hell is God’s judgment for sinners, including Satan himself, but Satan does everything in his power to bring down that judgment of God upon as many people as possible.

    This is why Satan is described as having the power of death. Death is what will bring us into the presence of God. Satan, the prosecutor, can’t wait for your day in court to arrive. He holds the power of accusation to bring down the holy wrath of God upon you for all the ways that you’ve rebelled against the Most High. But as the author of Hebrews points out in the book, and as well in our text, Jesus came to die, to bear that full punishment for sin. In 1 Corinthians 15, it says, O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. The power of sin is in the law. Like a honeybee which can only sting once and then die, death stung Jesus, leaving it harmless for those of us that are in Christ.

    Jesus destroyed the devil in a completely unexpected way. He disarmed him by taking the punishment on himself, leaving nothing for the devil to accuse us with. The devil says, but King David committed adultery and murder, and the Lord responds, and Jesus was put to death. Or Satan says, and Peter denied Jesus, and the Lord responds, and Jesus was put to death. In every instance in which Satan would stand up and accuse you before God, calling down his righteous wrath, God’s response is, and Jesus was put to death for that. Jesus was crucified. So Jesus partook of flesh and blood in order to destroy the devil by dying, and he destroyed the devil in order to deliver lifelong slaves. So thirdly, we see Jesus delivers slaves from bondage. There’s a young woman on staff at the Borbach Chapel this summer.

    She recounts, remembers what her life was like before she got married. What it was like before she got a new heart and was born again. She said she had this constant nagging fear of death that would keep her up at nights. She felt like a slave to fear, always dreading that day that she knew was inevitably coming, and she was not prepared for. Perhaps there are some of you this morning who have been living in this lifelong slavery, dreading that day. Jesus came to deliver you from that slavery. He came to set captives free. In Romans eight, verses 19 through 21, we read, for the creation waits with eager longing, for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

    Creation was made a slave to corruption, an inevitable path of death and disintegration because the crown of creation, man, the image of God, broke God’s law and committed high treason. But Jesus came to set captives free. In Romans eight, 38 and 39, we read, for I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. C.S. Lewis once observed that once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? And once a man is separated from God, what could he do but wither and die? You know, on the outside, death can look very similar for the Christian and for the unbeliever.

    But what’s very interesting is in the New Testament, it almost always uses the term asleep to describe the death of believers. We see this in 1 Corinthians 15. Verse six, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Or verse 20, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Or verse 51, behold, I tell you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed. Or 1 Thessalonians 4.13, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as those who have no hope. So while death may look similar on the outside, the New Testament’s point is that it is experienced very differently on the inside.

    For those who know Jesus, death has lost the sting. In Philippians 1.21, Paul says, for me to live is Christ but to die is gain. You see, this is true freedom. When death no longer is your entrance into the courtroom of the Holy God where eternal condemnation waits, but is instead your entrance into glory and spiritual fellowship with the one who took your punishment, you have true freedom. What’s the worst that can happen if you’re connected to Jesus? In Revelation 12, it says that the saints, those who believe in Jesus, and they conquered Satan by the blood of the lamb, by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. There’s an old hymn written a few hundred years ago that expresses this freedom beautifully. It’s titled, It Is Not Death to Die.

    Just read it here this morning. It is not death to die, to leave this weary world, road, and mid the brotherhood on high, to be at home with God. It is not death to close the eye long dimmed by tears and wake in glorious repose to spend eternal years It is not death to bear the wrench that sets us free from dungeon chain to breathe the air of boundless liberty. It is not death to fling aside this sinful dust and rise on strong exulting wings to live among the just. Jesus, thou Prince of Life, thy chosen cannot die. Like thee, they conquer in the strife to reign with thee on high. We read in Luke four when Jesus first began his ministry that he read from Isaiah 61, summing up his ministry in this way.

    The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has set me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Jesus came to partake of flesh and blood in order to die, so that he could destroy the one who had the power of death and ultimately to deliver us from the fear of death. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have not left us in this life long slavery. You were unwilling to allow our condemnation to be the last word, but you have had great mercy. You have been kind to us, but you have had great mercy. You are a God who proclaims liberty to the captives.

    So Lord, we ask that you would help us to look to Jesus, to put our faith in him, to find, experience that liberty that Jesus has come to give us. And Lord, we ask that if there are any here this morning who have never known that liberty for the first time that you might grant faith, you might awaken, you might grant that liberty to all those who call upon your name. And those that have known this liberty for years, Lord, we ask that you would awaken afresh an understanding and appreciation of that, that we might praise you for the way that you have done this for us. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen. Well, in response, we’re going to be singing hymn 512, in your bulletin there, it says, Jesus lives and so shall I.

    If you would stand and join us in singing.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Importance of the Public Assembly

    The Importance of the Public Assembly

    About this sermon

    Believers have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, through the new and living way he opened for them through the veil of his flesh. The tabernacle and temple pictured heavenly realities, and because Christ made full atonement for sin, his people now draw near to God in prayer and worship. Hebrews calls them to hold fast their confession, to stir one another up to love and good deeds, and to keep meeting together as the day of Christ’s return draws near. God’s people should love the public assembly of the Lord and gather with his church unless providence prevents them.

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Brothers and sisters in Christ, we’re going to take a break this week from our consideration of Mark’s Gospel, and we’re going to consider a passage today from the letter to the Hebrews. So, if you would rise for the reading of God’s Word, my sermon text today is Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19-25. Hebrews 10, 19-25. Let us hear God’s holy word. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way in which He inaugurated for us through the veil that is His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

    And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Your friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this morning is The Importance of the Public Assembly, and if you’re following along in the sermon outline, you’ll notice the number of keywords to be listening in my sermon today, if you’d like to keep track of those words. And, just as an aside, this morning we were watching an R.C. Sproul video on the Word of God, on the Bible as the Word of God, and he did a lecture on neo-orthodoxy and how the neo-orthodox don’t believe that this is the Word of God, but that it becomes the Word of God.

    Well, friends, the passage I read for you today, this is the Word of God. It doesn’t just become the Word of God. but we praise God that he has given us his word. Well, dear ones, it seems that church attendance has fallen on hard times among professing Christians these days. And this is the case not simply among those who would identify themselves as liberal or mainline or progressive Christians. This is even the case among those who would call themselves evangelical or Bible-believing Christians. It’s my understanding, and I forget exactly where I read this or heard this, but it’s my understanding that statistically speaking, many professing Christians today only attend public worship services maybe once or twice per month on average, and the pollsters who conduct these kinds of surveys regard you as a regular church attender if you show up once or twice a month.

    Now, there may be many reasons for this falling off of regular weekly attendance among professing Christians today, but from the standpoint of our passage from God’s Word, such a trend is not a good thing. After all, our passage for today tells us as believers that we ought not to neglect meeting together, or as some translations put it, We ought not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as it says in verse 25. Not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some. Even in the first century, there were some professing Christians who made a habit of absenting themselves from the public assembly. That’s not just a contemporary problem. It was even a problem in the Apostolic Church. but rather encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day draw near.

    Now, some might look at this and say, well, hey, I get together with Christian friends periodically. We meet at Starbucks. We enjoy a coffee together. We talk about spiritual things. We might even have a Bible study. Doesn’t that count? Well, friends, It is pretty clear from the context of our passage for today that when the author of Hebrews talks about assembling together, he’s talking about the public assembly of the church for Lord’s Day worship. And that raises the question, why do we come to church on Sunday? What is its purpose? Is it merely to fulfill a social obligation, or to meet people, or perhaps to make business Or is it because we like the preacher? Or because we like the music? Or because of the programs that the Church has to offer? Do we come to Church in order to gain merit with God and show off how spiritual we are?

    Well, whatever your personal reasons may be for coming to Church, the Bible offers us some very good reasons why we ought not to skip meeting together at the Church. Beloved, the Word of God indicates that we ought not to forsake the public assemblies us, because the public assemblies of the Church are one of the vital means that God uses to preserve His people in a state of salvation until the end. The week-in, week-out, Sabbath after Sabbath, Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day gatherings of the Church are one of the vital means that God uses to keep us connected to Christ and to keep us nurtured in our faith. Well, dear ones, another passage of Scripture in 1 Peter 1, verse 5, the Apostle Peter in that passage says that those of us who are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

    Now, we are Calvinists, we are Reformed, we believe in the perseverance of the saints, We believe that there is, therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, that God is sovereign in our salvation, and if you are in Christ, God will preserve you in Christ until the end. So, certainly, God keeps and preserves His people in their salvation by His omnipotent power. But, according to that passage I just read to you from 1 Peter, how does God keep His people? in the state of salvation unto the end, or for the final salvation of the last day? The answer is through their God-given faith in Christ. It is through faith that we are united to Christ, and it is through faith that we are preserved in Christ. But, that ought to lead to another question.

    How does God ordinarily impart and nurture saving faith within the hearts of those whom he has chosen for salvation? Well, the Scriptures indicate, beloved, that God does this through the means or vehicles of His grace, namely, the ministry of the Word and sacraments along with prayer, worship, and so forth. And where is this ministry of the Word and sacraments to be found? To what institution or entity has the risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ entrusted the ministry of the Word and sacraments? Has Christ entrusted this ministry of word and sacraments to the Billy Bob Evangelistic Association or some other parachurch ministry? Now, don’t get me wrong. There are many worthy parachurch ministries that do a lot of good things, and I’m not trying to knock them. But the issue is, has Christ entrusted the ministry of word and sacraments to such parachurch organizations?

    No, beloved. The biblical answer to such questions is that the ministry of the Gospel Word and Sacraments has been entrusted by our Lord Jesus Christ to His visible, organized Church. And this ministry of the Word and Sacraments is found especially in the public assemblies of the Church. And, therefore, to willfully forsake or neglect the public assembly of Christ’s Church is to abandon God’s ordinary means of preserving His people in a state of salvation. And, therefore, to willfully and hard-heartedly abandon the public assembly is to put yourself in a position of spiritual danger. In fact, the Word of God indicates that those who permanently and unrepentantly abandon the public assembly show themselves by that willful abandonment to be false converts who lack true saving faith. One of the evidences for this, if you would turn briefly to 1 John 2, 1 John 2, verse 19, where the Apostle John is addressing a situation where there were some schismatics and false teachers who had departed from the Church.

    In 1 John 2, verse 19, John says of these schismatics, he says, they went out from us. They had been members of the Johannine Church, the visible Church, but they went out from us. Why? they were not really of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.” John’s not talking about Christians who leave one local fellowship, one local body of Christ, to join with another local visible church. He’s talking about those who leave the church in its entirety and abandon the faith. And that is the danger that is presented That is a possibility for those who willfully abandon the public assembly of worship. So, let’s dive into our text for today and let’s consider this passage.

    In order to understand the significance of this passage and the thrust of it, we need to understand something about the book of Hebrews or the letter to the Hebrews as a whole. The book of Hebrews was written to a group of Jewish Christians who had suffered a great deal because of their confession of faith in Christ. And, therefore, they were discouraged, and they were tempted to abandon their confession of faith in Christ and to return to their former Judaism. Now, we don’t know exactly who wrote the epistles of the Hebrews. Some have suggested that Paul wrote it. Others have suggested Apollos. And the human author is not really the important thing. We know who the divine author is. This is part of the canon of Holy Scripture. This is part of the Word of God.

    And this letter was written, probably written, before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. So this is one of the likely very early epistles. And some have suggested that Hebrews is actually a divinely inspired Christian sermon or exhortation that had been copied and delivered to the church, whatever the case may be. This was written in a period of redemptive history before the destruction of the Temple. It was written in a period of history where the primary persecutor of the Church in the early days of the Apostolic Church was the Jewish religious establishment. And if you were a Jew who converted to Christ, that could have devastating effects in your personal life. You would be excommunicated from the synagogue. You would be separated from the community that you had known from your childhood.

    You might even lose family members. And so, this is a very harsh thing that these believers were going through, and they were tempted to say, you know, maybe we should just go back. And the author of Hebrews is saying, no, you can’t go back. Throughout the epistle, the author urges and exhorts them not to return to their old ways, not to commit the deadly sin of final apostasy. Throughout this letter, the author demonstrates how Christianity is superior to pharisaical Judaism. He shows that Christ is superior to angels, because Christ is God incarnate. He shows how Christ, the covenant mediator of the New Covenant, is superior to Moses, the covenant mediator of the Old Covenant. He shows how Christ’s priesthood is superior to the Old Covenant priesthood, and he shows is superior to the Old Covenant, and so forth.

    Now, in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 through 18, the author demonstrates the absolute completeness and finality of Christ’s vicarious sacrifice for our sins in contrast to the incompleteness of the endless animal sacrifices that were required under the Old Covenant. And, beloved, in view of Christ’s final, once-for-all perfect sacrifice. We believers are urged in our text for today to draw near to God with confidence. You know, some believers, because Hebrews contains some serious warnings, some believers read this epistle as if the author is trying to get them to lose the confidence of their faith and cause them to doubt their salvation. That’s not at all what’s going on here. If you read through Hebrews carefully, the author focuses on the need to cling to that full assurance of hope and that confidence in Christ. He’s urging them to continue trusting Christ and Christ alone for their salvation, for salvation is found only in and through Him.

    So, he’s urging them to hold on to the Christian hope that they profess as opposed to abandoning their Christian confession and going back to their old pre-Christian ways. Now, closely linked to this exhortation is the exhortation for believers to encourage one another in their Christian faith, and also not to forsake the Christian assembly. Now, it’s interesting, Hebrews 10, verse 25, the very last verse in our text for today, occurs right before a solemn warning passage about the sin of apostasy. And what is the implication contextually? Well, dear ones, the implication of this is that if we willfully abandon the public assembly, and are not providentially hindered from that assembly. If we do so, then we expose ourselves to the danger of apostasy from the Christian faith. God preserves His people, but He ordinarily uses the means of the public assembly to help preserve His people in the state of salvation.

    Now, with this in mind, let’s dive into some of the details of our passage. And, first of all, beloved, Consider the basis for our confidence to enter the heavenly presence of God. Let’s consider verses 19 through 22, the basis for our confidence to enter the heavenly presence of God. Praise be to God that because of Jesus, because of who He is and what He has done, we need not go before God in a groveling craven, fearful attitude. Certainly we need to fear the Lord in the sense of godly reverence, but we need not come before God wondering, is he going to accept me, or is he going to send a lightning bolt from heaven and strike me dead? If you are in Christ, if Christ is your Savior, you’re welcome. Your Father in Heaven welcomes you to come with confidence before His throne of grace.

    Verse 19 says, therefore brethren, therefore, in light of what he has spoken of in the previous context about the perfection and finality of Christ’s sacrifice, therefore brethren, that would include sistren as well, brothers and sisters, therefore brethren, since we have confidence, not we might have, we do have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus. What’s he talking about there? When he speaks of the holy place, he is hearkening back to the Old Covenant tabernacle and temple. In the tabernacle that God instructed Moses to construct for the people of Israel, and later on when they were settled in the land, the temple that Solomon raised up under the providence of God, there was in that temple a holy place, and then there was the Holy of Holies, which was behind a curtain, It had the Ark of the Covenant with the Tables of the Covenant inside the Ark, and only the High Priest could enter into the Most Holy Place once a year.

    What was it that happened when Jesus died on the cross? As Jesus was giving up the ghost, if you will, as he completed his work on the cross, what occurred? A miraculous thing occurred here in the Temple, in Jerusalem. The curtain that separated the holy place from the most holy place was torn in two, from top to bottom, and from God to us. We don’t climb up to God. We don’t climb Jacob’s Ladder, contrary to what that child’s song says. Rather, God in Christ climbs down to us. He came down to us to raise us back up to the Father. And this is the picture here. You see, the Old Testament tabernacle and temple These were an earthly picture, an earthly type or copy of the heavenly realities. And what this is communicating to us is that because of the blood of Jesus, because Jesus has made full and perfect atonement for sin, those who trust in him for salvation are welcomed into the holy presence of God.

    When you and I pray to God in the name of Christ, when we come before our Father in heaven in prayer, By faith, through grace, and by the Holy Spirit, we enter into the heavenly Holy of Holies. We worship God in His direct presence, and we do so by the blood of Jesus. What is that a reference to? That is used here in this passage to represent His atoning sacrifice for sin. Beloved, the way of access into the heavenly Holy of Holies is now open to all believers in Christ. all because of our Savior’s perfect, once-for-all, substitutionary atonement for sin. And it is that that we will celebrate today as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, as Christ comes to us to feed our souls, to sup with us by His Spirit and through faith. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we remember Christ and His perfect sacrifice, and we have the benefits of His sacrifice sealed to us as we partake of the sacrament with hearts of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

    But, as an aside, please note, we cannot do this apart from the public assembly. We cannot. I mean, think about the word communion. The word communion is closely related to the word community. The Lord’s Supper is not something that we can celebrate apart from the gathered body of believers. I know that some Christian bookstores and supply stores, church supply stores, provide, you know, individual communion packages, and it’s, you know, I know during the pandemic many churches, including the one I served back in Cleveland before coming here, we, during the heyday of the individual pacts because of concerns about sanitation and so forth. However, unfortunately, many believers seem to think it’s okay to do that in private by yourself. Well, our confessional standards, I think, rightly condemn private masses, which were a practice back then. I believe they still are in the Roman Catholic Church.

    You see, this is a corporate thing that we celebrate today as the gathered body. and Christ promises to be present in a special way by His Spirit as we commune with Him in the Lord’s Supper. But, in any case, verse 19, Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, do you have such confidence, dear listener? Have you placed your faith and confidence in the Savior’s blood to cleanse you from your sins and to give you access into the most holy place? Have you drawn near to God through faith in Jesus Christ with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith? Jesus welcomes you, dear sinner. He welcomes all who recognize their need to come unto Him. And if you don’t recognize your need, I urge you, go back to the law of God, read the Ten Commandments, read the Sermon on the Mount, and ask the Spirit to open your eyes to show you how you failed to measure up to those standards, to the standard of God’s holy law. and ask the Lord to show you your need for a sinless Savior who made perfect atonement for sin, and come in repentance and faith to Christ.

    And so we see the basis on which we may enter the Holy of Holies. Take to heart next, beloved, the exhortation to hold unswervingly to the Christian hope that we profess. Look especially at verse 23. I know we’re going through this passage quickly because of the time. but skipping down to verse 23, it says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. The exhortation to these weary believers is not to continue to hold unswervingly to their Christian hope. And I want you to notice here, we find in this passage the triad of faith, hope, and love. Look at verse 22, it says, Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of what? Full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

    That is likely a reference to baptism and so forth. And so we’ve got faith in verse 22. In verse 23, we obviously have hope. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope. without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Praise God that he is faithful to keep his covenant promises. And then we see love mentioned in verse 24, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. In biblical theology, faith, hope, and love, while they can be distinguished, while they must be distinguished, were justified by faith, were not justified by love. But nevertheless, where there is faith, also be love. But, I want to hone in on that word, hope, for just a minute. Now, yesterday, I might have thought to myself, oh, I hope it doesn’t snow today, as was predicted, right?

    It’s ironic. Elder Gidley and I were kind of joking about this, that we just had our spring Presidentary meeting on Friday and Saturday, and, you know, we’re wondering, maybe it’s maybe God is sending the snow as sort of a rebuke to our bearing a false witness and calling it the Spring Presbytery Meeting. But be that as it may, beloved, I could say, oh, I hope it doesn’t snow, but of course, if that’s what I hoped yesterday, that hope was proven to be unsubstantiated. We often talk about hope as if there’s uncertainty in it, but when the New Testament uses the term hope in most contexts, it’s not referring to a mere wish, a mere, oh, I hope so, oh, I hope to be saved in the end. No. Rather, that term hope, in the Greek and in the context in which it is used, refers to a confident expectation of the future salvation that God has promised and secured for his people through the finished work of Christ.

    The Christian hope is not, oh, maybe you’ll get there, maybe you’ll make it, but maybe not. No. The Christian hope is certainty, is a certainty. If you are in Christ, your final salvation is an absolute certainty, but it is not presently seen. We still, in this present age, we walk by faith and not by sight. And it is not until faith gives way to sight It is not until hope gives way to the final consummated reality at our Lord’s return that hope will no longer be a thing, because we will have the reality present then and there. No, but it is still in the future, we still wait for it, but it is a certainty, so that’s the author of Hebrews is referring to when he talks about hope, and that’s why he can say, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.

    Don’t waver from the expectation of full, final, consummated salvation. You are already justified. One day, by His grace, you shall be glorified. For all those whom He has called, He has justified. All those whom He’s justified, He will glorify. Praise be to God. Beloved, I urge you, as a professing believer in Christ, to hold unswervingly to your confession of hope in Christ. But how does God keep that hope, that certainty, that assurance alive? Well, this brings me to my final point of application here from our passage for today. Notice the central importance of the public assembly in stimulating, or other versions say, stirring up or stirring on or provoking one another to love and good works. Verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and let us consider how to stimulate or stir up one another to love and good deeds. not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.” Let me reflect a little bit on verse 24.

    You know, many folks today, especially those who are between churches or who maybe have relocated, as they look for a new church to connect with, There’s many criteria, and many of these are valid criteria, things to think about. Obviously, if you’re looking for a new church, you want to make sure that it’s a good, you know, ideally an OPC church, but a good, faithful, reformed, doctrinally sound church, a church that is faithful in doctrine and in worship and in its witness for Christ and so forth. Those are very important criteria. But, you know, we live in a consumer culture, don’t we? We live in a culture where you can go into, I mean, you know, when I was traveling to Presbytery on Thursday, I stopped in at the McDonald’s and, you know, they have all kinds of choices.

    You know, this was for dinner on the road. All kinds of choices. And I, you know, I’m sitting there. What do I want? What do I feel like having tonight? Do I want the Quarter Pounder or the Big Mac or do I want a chicken sandwich? whatever the case may be. I knew I wanted a milkshake. That’s a given. But in any case, that’s the way that we view our consumer consumption of other things tends to bleach into the way that we view choosing a church. What can it do for me? Certainly, there’s some significance and legitimacy to that. You want a church where you’re going to be spiritually fed, where the preaching is faithful and so forth, where the worship is faithful. But at the same time, how many Christians, when they are between churches, are looking for a church with the question in mind, how can I serve this body?

    How can I, using the spiritual gifts that God has given to me, how can I contribute to stirring up my brothers and sisters in this local fellowship in love and good deeds? This is where we, in American Christianity, need to repent. The Apostle Paul, in speaking of the Church, speaks about it as the body of Christ, and he uses the body imagery. We all have multiple parts to our one unified body. You have hands, you have feet, you have fingers, you have toenails, you have eyes and ears and noses and lips, you have a belly button. Whatever the case may be, We all have different parts of our body, but all of these parts serve together to work together to serve the whole as a unified organism. And that’s the way the Church is meant to be.

    God has redeemed us. He has redeemed you, brother or sister, not only to bring you into Christ, but to bring you into the body of Christ so that he might use you to encourage and stir up your brothers and sisters, to stimulate them, to provoke them even, to stir them up unto love and good deeds. So, let us get rid of this consumer mindset and let us focus on a servant’s developing and nurturing a servant’s attitude. But again, this requires, what verse 25 says, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of son. but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. What day is he talking about? I believe he’s talking there about the day, the day of judgment. Every day that goes by is a day closer to the final day when Jesus will return and judge humanity.

    Are we stirring one another up? Are we encouraging one another in our pilgrim journey in this present age? as we journey closer and closer to that glorious final day when Jesus will return in glory and usher in the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells. Assembling together, Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day, week in and week out, whether we feel like it or not. I think that’s important. You know, some Christians might say, I really shouldn’t go to church today. I’m really not into it. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. No, be a hypocrite. Come to church. Come to where God is pleased, where Christ is pleased to be present to minister his grace to you. And even when your attitude is not right or your mindset is not right, all the more reason to come, because Jesus welcomes struggling sinners.

    And he comes in grace and mercy to feed our souls. through the Word and the sacraments. Not forsaking our own assembling together, but encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day drawing near. Praise God, that day is drawing near. So let us encourage one another. But as I close this sermon for today, I do want to make some qualifying comments as we wrap things up in our time in the Word today. I believe that that God gives extraordinary grace to believers who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. There are some believers, especially since the pandemic, there are some believers who, through providential circumstances outside of their control, are unable to gather with the public assembly. That’s not who the author here has in mind. If you are unable to attend a public worship assembly because of sickness, or because you’re in prison, or for other providential, legitimate providential circumstances, this passage is not rebuking you.

    In such extraordinary circumstances, I believe we have biblical warrant to say that God provides extraordinary grace. I want to give just a brief story of, and a brief example of this. In the previous church I served, there was a gentleman in our church, in fact one of the elders, A number of years ago had a very serious stroke and had to move into an assisted living situation. He did have his own apartment, but he ended up moving to a facility that was run by the Roman Catholic Church. And I would go and visit this gentleman periodically and pray with him and read scripture and so forth. And there was one day when I was visiting this gentleman, there was a dear lady named Polly. Polly was sitting in her wheelchair. near the entrance to this facility as I was going in to visit this gentleman from our church.

    And she saw me carrying the Bible. I probably looked like a Mormon visionary. I mean, I had my tie, and I had the Bible. And her eyes got big as I was starting to walk by. And she looked at me, and she blurted out, is that a Bible? And I’m kind of stopped in my tracks. I said, yes, ma’am, this is a Bible. I’m a pastor. I’m visiting a member of our congregation. It turns out that Polly had been in that facility for about two years. She is a dear sister in Christ. She knows the Word. She loves the Lord. She loves to sing praises to God. But because she was there in a Roman Catholic facility that didn’t have a Protestant minister to visit her, she had been praying for two years, for two years, to have a pastor come and visit her and spend time with her.

    And so, this was such a blessing to me. Polly’s a wonderful sister in Christ. Here is a dear believer, a dear sister in Christ, who would have loved, she would love to be with us today. She would love to be in the Assembly of the Saints, but because of her condition, she was providentially hindered from being in the public assembly. And it was a privilege, I touted it as a privilege to get to know her, and we would, I would visit her like every week, usually every week or every other week. We pray together, we sing hymns together, we talk about the things of the Lord, and it was a great blessing. You know, in situations like that, if you’re ministering, the one ministering, you end up getting ministered to more. She really has encouraged me in the Lord.

    So, that’s an example of what I’m talking about. So, please don’t understand or interpret anything that I said in the sermon as a condemnation to those who are in providential circumstances where they’re unable to be in the public assembly. I also believe that we need to be very sensitive and careful when we’re ministering to believers who’ve been burned by an abusive or a hurtful church situation. We need to be very patient with such brothers and sisters. But having given those qualifications, again, hear what the author fevers and what the Holy Spirit, through the author, is saying to us. Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together. but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Amen. Let us pray.

    Our Lord and Father in Heaven, we do thank you and praise you for the public assembly, and we thank you that we live in a land where we are still free, O Lord, to gather legally in such assemblies. May we never take this privilege for granted. May we always love the assembly of the Lord. May we always be present unless providentially hindered, and may we, O God, seek to stimulate one another to love and good deeds as we await together that glorious day when our Lord Jesus will return, and usher in the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells. We pray these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • By Faith Abraham Lived As An Alien In The Land

    By Faith Abraham Lived As An Alien In The Land

    About this sermon

    The Lord called Abram to leave his country for a land he would show him, and by faith Abraham obeyed and lived in the land of promise as a stranger, dwelling in tents. He looked for the city with foundations whose builder and maker is God. Like Abraham, believers are pilgrims on the earth, assured of things hoped for, and they set their eyes on Jesus, who has gone ahead to prepare a place for them.

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    Sermon transcript

    We come now to the reading of God’s inspired word. As we have two passages this morning, we begin in the Old Testament reading from the book of Genesis chapter 12. Turn there with me if you would. Genesis chapter 12. And there we shall read verses one through 10. I would remind you that this is the inspired word of God given to us through the writings of the prophet Moses and days of old. Genesis 12 verse one.

    Now the Lord said to Abram, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father’s house to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

    So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his nephew, and all their possessions, which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran.

    And they set out for the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land, as far as the site of Shechem, to the yoke of Moriah. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your descendants, I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and I on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev. Now there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.

    Thus far, the reading of God’s word from Genesis 10, Genesis 12, one to 10. Let’s turn over to our New Testament passage as we open our Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. Continuing our study in Hebrews 11, verses one through 16. Once again, we read the inspired word of God, give your attention. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it, the men of old gained approval.

    By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, to which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death. And he was not found because God took him up. For he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God. And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.

    By faith, Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed, by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.

    By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith, even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, there was born even of one man and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.

    All these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

    We end here the reading of God’s inspired word. Amen. Let’s pray together. Father, once again, we humbly come before you asking for the grace of the Spirit, the Spirit who moved the prophet of old and the writer of the Hebrews in the New Testament days to write the things that we have read here this morning. We pray that that same Spirit, that singular Spirit, the Holy Spirit, would now be in our midst enlightening, illumining, that we might be built up in our understanding of the Word of God and in our ability to walk and live according to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We do ask, Lord, for the spirit of power and grace to be upon the preacher, that he would open his mouth clearly, effectively, and boldly, testifying to the good things which have been revealed in Scripture and in these latter days in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. Now guide us to the remainder of our service here today, O God. Be with us, we pray. May we honor you with our attentive spirits even now. As we pray these things together, we do so in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    In our short series on Hebrews chapter 11, we come today to Abraham. while the faith of Abel, Enoch and Noah might have to be inferred from what is recorded of them. Text that we’ve looked at, although for all three of them, it is, it is a certain inference that we draw in reference to them, that they were men of faith, but a little different.

    Abraham’s faith is explicitly attested to in the Genesis narrative for in Genesis chapter 15 and verse six, we read, Then he believed in the Lord and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. That classic text of Old Testament times that became Paul’s theme in Romans 3 and again in Galatians chapter 3 as he laid out for the church that which we have come to know as the doctrine of justification by faith alone through grace alone in the Lord Jesus Christ alone. Abraham, given the promise of God that his descendants would be as numerable as the sand on the seashore and so on. We read simply that he believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. Genesis giving direct testimony of the faith of the belief, the faith of the man Abraham.

    The author of Hebrews in chapter six, text that we’ve not read this morning in chapter six and verse 13 has already previously referred to Abraham’s faith, faith in the promise of God and of Abraham’s patient waiting for the fulfillment of that promise. Well, here in chapter 11, the writer of Hebrews enlarges on that very same theme. Repeatedly throughout his career, Abraham acted as a man who walked by faith and not by sight. And we remember that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, verse one of Hebrews 11.

    For by it, that is, for by faith, the men of old gained approval. By faith, Abel, we saw, offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. God testified about his gifts, that through faith, although he is dead, he still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death. And he was not found because God took him up for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God. And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.

    By faith, last time we saw, by faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Now today, by faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance.

    And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

    As you know, in the flood, Noah and his family of eight were the only persons to survive. When they had come out from the ark after the flood, God gave them the promise, sealed with the rainbow, that he would not again wipe out, quote, all flesh, unquote, by the water of the flood. We read that in Genesis chapter nine, verses 11 to 13. But after it appeared that God’s judgments had not made the people fear him, God was just as angry with Noah’s descendants as he had been with the men before the flood.

    Pride led such men to build a tower to be a rallying point for their worship of self. But God showed them that men can not long work together with a sinful purpose as their common object. He broke up their unity in sin by confusing their speech at Babel and scattering them over all the earth. This second great disappointment gives way in scripture and in history to a line of men descended from Noah through Shem.

    We must remember, as author S.G. de Graaf says, and as scripture so plainly teaches, quote, the flood, like every other judgment during the time of the covenant of grace, took place for the sake of our salvation. Yes, you heard that right, took place for the sake of our salvation.

    According to 1 Peter 3 in verse 20, Noah and his family were saved by the waters of the flood. The flood removed unrighteous men from the face of the earth so that Noah, his family, the animals, and the whole world might be saved. The flood points ahead to baptism. Even the final judgment we might offer is for salvation’s sake. The world will be renewed through it. We are to tell the children about that salvation as we teach these Bible stories to our covenant youth, showing them how God saved the world in grace through the flood.

    Out of the catastrophic destruction of the flood and the chaos and the confusion that was the outcome of the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11 concludes by introducing to us and to all the family of Terah, descended from the line of Shem, one of the sons of Noah, which thus prepares the way for a closer acquaintance with Terah’s son, Abram, appointed to be renamed Abraham, that one we know as the friend of God, the father of many nations, the father of the faithful. God’s purpose to save and bless all mankind was to be carried out in a most wonderful way. God selected and called one man to become the head and ancestor of a single nation. And in this man and the nation that would descend from him, God purposed to bless the whole world. Abraham was that man, and Israel was that nation. God made known his purpose in what the Bible calls the promise.

    Galatians 3 17 or the blessing. Galatians 3 14 or the covenant. Galatians 3 verse 17. The promise, the blessing, the covenant revealed in things related to Abraham. Its terms, the terms of the covenant blessing and the promise, are given many times over in the book of Genesis, but the essence of it lies already in the first word of God spoken to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and verse 3, when God says to Abraham, in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

    To believe this promise that blessing was coming to the nations was a work of faith. It was over against all appearances and all probability given what had just happened in the flood and in turn in the days following the Tower of Babel. It was against all appearances and all probability that God was going to bring blessing to the whole world. Yet this was just where the religious value of that promise lay for Abraham and for his children after him in faith. They have to believe something on the basis solely of their confidence in the one who promised it. Or rather, they have to believe in that divine person, the personal Jehovah, their God who has spoken to them. They must absolutely trust him.

    Now, I use that word absolutely very self-consciously, for it strikes me, as I have pondered over the past several months, that the word absolutely is one of the most overused and abused words in contemporary speech and language. By definition, absolutely means with no qualification, with no restriction, with no limitation, totally. Again, amazingly, by definition, absolutely means without qualification, without restriction, without limitation, totally. Yet it appears to me that this word absolutely, has become the catch-all word to describe everything. Whether it’s being used as an adjective or as an adverb, it doesn’t matter. Will I see you tomorrow? Absolutely. Did you enjoy your dinner? Absolutely. How was your vacation? We had an absolutely wonderful time. Really, without qualification, without limitation, no restriction, 100% guaranteed, What man do you know whom you can trust absolutely? Who do you know whose every word you can believe absolutely?

    Yet here I am today suggesting that Abraham and his children were being called to absolutely trust in the God who called Abram out of Haran to go to a land that he would show him. Abraham had to believe something on the basis solely of his confidence in the one who promised it. Or rather, he had to believe in that person, the personal Jehovah, as Abraham’s God.

    He must absolutely trust him. To do so, he must know him. And that he might know him, God must reveal himself to him. That is why we read all through Genesis of God’s appearing or speaking to this or to that other patriarch. However he accomplished it, God was always trying thus to make his people better acquainted with himself by way of divine revelation. For such knowledge was to be the basis of their faith, their trust in him. Upon faith in him depended their faith in his word, and such faith in him and in his word is not man’s doing, as you know. For you, as it was for Abraham, faith is not of yourselves. Faith is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one, not even Abraham, may boast.

    By building the Tower of Babel, the people on Earth had shown that they did not want to live by faith in God’s promise to preserve the human race and one day send the Redeemer. This promise gave them no strength. They were afraid and therefore they took steps to ensure themselves of protection in the face of all danger. Because they did not want to obey God’s command to fill the earth, God had to scatter them, as takes place after the Tower of Babel event. Now, idolatry and superstition gradually became prevalent on the earth, which should not surprise us. Without faith in God’s word, the people began to believe their own ideas about God, instead of clinging to what he had revealed about himself.

    God then let them follow their own path, as it were. Just as a wise father sometimes lets his child go his own foolish way, for the child refuses to listen to instruction. He will have to learn his lesson, as it were, the hard way. God decided to allow the nations to find out for themselves where disobedience would get them.

    But that is not to say that he abandoned them. As a matter of fact, he was good to them. He gave rain and allowed them to prosper. But he also punished them frequently when their sins became too much for him to bear. Yet he sent no prophets to preach his word to them, nor did he give them any new revelations. Even after he had scattered the peoples across the earth, even then he did not abandon them. In spite of everything, he still loved the world and intended to send the Redeemer through whom the nations would be saved.

    The Redeemer, that one who would come, would not echo the ungodliness of the nations. He would do God’s will in everything, we might say, absolutely. And his hope would be in the word of God. He would be obedient for all, and he, the Redeemer, would take away the sins of the world.

    The nations could not and would not live with the Lord. All the same, God would send the Redeemer to save them as a miracle of his great love. Then they would all have to come to him and abandon their ungodly lives. To teach the nations and the people in all subsequent ages that the Redeemer would be completely unlike us in our ungodliness, God caused the nation from which the Redeemer would be born to live a completely separate life.

    Think of the life of Israel. To that people, he would indeed send his prophets. Within that nation, he would preserve the knowledge of his name. Because his chosen people, Israel, would dwell apart, they would have to realize that their faith in the Redeemer required breaking with the ungodliness and idolatry of all the other nations. This would eventually teach the other nations to forsake those sins as well. But that nation that was to be so set apart was not yet born. It would come forth out of one man. God chose that one man. God chose Abram, a man of Shem’s line still living in Ur of the Chaldeans. The Christ, the coming Redeemer Messiah, would be born of Shem’s line. We might ask, why did God choose Abram out of all the men of the world? Why did he choose Abram? Was his tribe any better than all the other tribes? Answer, not at all. In fact, idols were worshipped in the house of his father, Terah, as was done throughout most of the world.

    We simply do not know why God turned to Abram. God chose Abram because God chose Abram. End of sentence. God made it clear to Abram that he was to leave even his father’s house and family and land. And he was to move on to another land, a land that the Lord would show him. We do not know how God passed this message on to Abram.

    However it happened, though, Abram was completely convinced that it was indeed the Lord’s command. The Lord certainly made a heavy demand on Abram when he asked him to break with everything familiar and dear to him. The demand, this demand, was to teach Abram that life with the Lord is entirely different from the sinful life to which he was accustomed. The Redeemer to come would not share in the spirit of the peoples of Abram’s time.

    He would be a gift from the Lord. Abram did not yet know where he was to go. He was simply to follow the Lord. All Abraham could do was move ahead in faith, trusting the Lord in everything. Absolutely, we might say. We are to trust in the Lord and follow after him in the same way. The Lord strengthened Abram in his obedience by giving him a promise. Abram had to trust the Lord and follow him simply because the Lord had called him.

    The Lord led him to the promised land of Canaan. But even there, Abram did not find permanence. We read in the text today, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, a sojourner, a pilgrim on the way. Though this was to be his land as an inheritance, but for now he was just passing through. Abraham’s hope ultimately, like our hope, is a heavenly eternal hope, absolutely. Abraham, like the others in Hebrews 11, died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed, like the others, that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

    For those who say such things make it clear that they are indeed seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, men and women of faith desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has indeed prepared a city for them.

    So you too, like Abraham, No, even more, like your Savior, have an eternal and a heavenly hope. Therefore, beloved, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above and not on the things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

    I ask you, do you believe this? Once again, your pastor says, I pray you do. Amen. Let’s pray together. Our Father, we pray that we would be that people, by grace, who set our hearts, our hopes, our affections upon our God, trusting what you have spoken, the promises that you have made, the revelation that you have given us, that revelation culminated, consummated in your own Son, the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has come into the world to save sinners such as we are. And we pray that we would trust in him and follow after him. And we pray, Father, that we would learn the lessons of Hebrew 11, and that we, like those who are named here, would be those who are assured of things hoped for, convicted of things not yet seen, as we would, by faith, be found acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O God, doing the works of our God and keeping your commands and following after you, recognizing that we are here pilgrims, with a destination above, where Christ has already gone to prepare a place for us, and we would follow after him. Setting our eyes upon Jesus, then, Father, bless us today as we hear these things together. We do pray all of this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let’s respond to the reading and preaching of God’s word by opening our hymn books to number 190 today as we approach the Lord’s Supper hereafter. Hymn number 190.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Abel Still Speaks

    Abel Still Speaks

    About this sermon

    Hebrews 11 begins its examples of faith with Abel, who by faith offered God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain and was commended as righteous. Cain’s anger led to the first murder, and Abel, the first human recorded to die, was killed for his faithfulness. Though he died, Abel still speaks, pointing to Christ, who was rejected and crucified for the redemption of a sinful people, and to the saving faith God gives to all who receive him.

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    Sermon transcript

    And now we turn to the reading of God’s word, and I would ask you first of all to turn with me to the book of Genesis chapter 4. Genesis chapter 4. Not in your bulletin, but in keeping with our sermon this morning. Genesis chapter 4, there we’ll read verses 1 through 16. Beloved, give your attention, for this is the inspired word of God. Genesis 4, beginning with verse 1.

    Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord. Again she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part, also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel, and for his offering. But for Cain, and for his offering, he had no regard.

    So Cain became very angry, and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it.

    Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel, your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper? He said, What have you done?

    The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you. You will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.

    Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is too great to bear. Behold, you have driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth. and whoever finds me will kill me. So the Lord said to him, therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

    Thus far, the reading of God’s word from Genesis 4, 1 to 16. Now turn over with me to the New Testament, as we turn to Hebrews chapter 11 and there we’ll also read verses 1 through 16. Book of Hebrews chapter 11 beginning with verse 1. Once again hear the Word of God. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

    For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the world were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. God testifying about his gifts and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, and he was not found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.

    By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.

    By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith, even Sarah herself received ability to conceive even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead, at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore.

    All these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

    Thus far, the reading of God’s inspired word. Let’s pray together, asking his blessing upon the reading, preaching and hearing of his word today. Let’s pray together. Our father, we come humbly before you, praying that we would have the grace of your spirit to rightly understand these words that we have heard read this morning. We pray, Father, that we would apply ourselves diligently now to the hearing of the preached word also, and that you would be pleased through the voice of your servant, O God, to communicate the things of God in such a way that the hearts and minds and lives of your people would be wonderfully transformed, that we would be that people who by faith set our hearts and minds upon heavenly things a heavenly country that is prepared for those who trust in Jesus. O Lord, bless the activities of this day and all to your glory. We pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.

    Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, for by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, to which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts. And through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.

    This speaks of Abel. In Genesis 4, Adam and Eve bore children, giving birth to Cain and Abel, as we read together. Abel was a keeper of flocks and Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.

    So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you so angry? Why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you, but you must master it.

    Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper? He said that as God said, what have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

    As we reflect upon this passage of Genesis chapter four that we read this morning and turn and in turn to Hebrews 11 that speaks of Abel, we note this. The first example of faith that the author of Hebrews finds in the Old Testament biblical record is Abel.

    According to the narrative of Genesis 4, 3 through 5, Abel and his elder brother Cain brought their offerings to God at the appropriate season. Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions, since he was a shepherd. while Cain, the agriculturalist, brought an offering of the fruit of the ground, of his crops, in other words. In either case, or in both cases, the material of the offering was suitable to the offerer’s vocation. One a shepherd, the other a gardener.

    Yet the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. Why was there this discrimination on the part of God toward these two men? Cain was dejected because his offering was disregarded. But God pointed out to him the way of acceptance. He said, if you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you. But you must master it.

    In Hebrews 9.22, we read, according to the law, One may almost say all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. But we point out that it is nowhere suggested in the Genesis narrative that it was a sin offering which the two brothers brought before the Lord.

    It was in either case the appropriate presentation of the first fruits of their increase. In other words, it was not simply because Abel brought a blood offering that his was accepted and Cain’s was not. The narrative distinguishes between Cain and Abel. Abel did well, Cain did not. Abel obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts.

    Consider well the testimony of Jesus himself in Matthew 23 in verse 35, where he speaks of the blood of righteous Abel, Matthew 23, verse 35. And also consider the words of the apostle John in 1 John 3, verse 12, where John tells us, that Cain killed his brother because his own deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. Abel is not named, but his deeds were described as righteous by the Apostle John.

    And again, in Revelation 6, verses 9 through 11, we reflect upon the passage where the souls of the martyrs cry aloud for vindication. And we are told that they should rest for a little while longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed, even as they had been, would be completed also.” Revelation 6, 9-11.

    It has been said Well, first of all, it’s been said that Abel’s offering was accepted because it was a blood offering. We’re arguing that that’s not the rationale of scripture. It has been said, on the other hand, that Hebrews simply means that Abel, by his faith, bears abiding witness to succeeding ages.

    But more than this is indicated by Hebrews 12.24 which says that the purifying blood of Christ speaks better than the blood of Abel.

    A clear reference to Genesis 4.10 where God said the voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. Despite God’s reproof, the power of unbelief and sin in Cain’s life grew all the more stronger.

    He did not repent and turn at the word of the Lord. Instead, he hardened his heart against God and against his brother. He was angry at his brother. He was angry at his brother for possessing faith. Cain’s anger and hatred only grew stronger. He attacked his brother.

    He killed him. Human blood had now been shed for the very first time in history. Abel was the first human being recorded in Genesis to die. Cain was guilty of fratricide. He had murdered his own brother. And as S.G. de Graaf puts it, that wasn’t even the worst of it. More terrible still was his hatred, not only for his brother, but his hatred for the Lord’s covenant and for the Lord’s promise.

    Cain had killed Abel because Abel was a believer, because Abel was believing in the Lord. Abel typifies all human beings after him who have been oppressed, persecuted, and put to death for their faith. He is also, that is, Abel is also a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was put to death because of his faith, his faith in the revelation of God, and because of his love for his Heavenly Father, whose will he unswervingly accomplished even unto the end, the end of the cross. Yes, Abel is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet there is a difference between those two deaths. The blood of Abel could not make propitiation for Cain’s crime. Instead, the blood of Abel cried out from the ground for God’s justice to avenge it. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is most certainly a propitiation for the sins and misdeeds of those who believe in him.

    By faith, Abel still speaks. But the sprinkled blood of Jesus, who is the mediator of a new and better covenant, speaks better than the blood of Abel. Faith is a trusting response to God’s word. Receive it and believe it today. Believe the word that is spoken even by Abel, who through faith still speaks even though he is dead. Receive that word of the blood of Jesus that speaks of salvation to all who will trust in him. Receive it and believe it today.

    Saving faith clings to the reality of promises that are not yet seen. I remind you of what we quoted last week to you from the Heidelberg Catechism, question number 21. What is true faith? And the catechism answers, true faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in his word is true, it is also a deep-rooted assurance created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel that out of sheer grace earned for us, and that out of sheer grace earned by Christ. Not only others, but I too have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. Do you believe that?

    Amen. Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, we pray that we would hear the word of God that speaks, that even today as we have read from Hebrews 11, the word of Abel, the blood of Abel still speaks and speaks of the certainty of a judgment which is still to come for those who have persecuted and killed your saints, your martyrs in the world, and their blood cries out for vindication in that last and final day.

    And we think, too, of the blood of Jesus that speaks even more clearly, more wonderfully of the salvation that has come to all who would receive him and accept him as Lord and as Savior. Our Father, indeed, he was rejected because of his commitment to your word. He was crucified, dead, and buried for the very purpose of the redemption of a sinful people. As your providence brought him to that awful and painful death, we know it was for us who believe.

    Grant to us, then, true saving faith, and may you apply by your spirit the word of truth that we would hear your word as it speaks to us today through Christ Jesus. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. I would ask that you join with me in responding to the word of God as we join together in singing from our hymnal number 424.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • What Is Faith?

    What Is Faith?

    About this sermon

    Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. After the warnings of Hebrews 10, the writer reminds believers of their earlier endurance and points them to Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, who looked for a better, heavenly country. Faith rests on Christ, the high priest of the new covenant, and it perseveres in hope because he continues to intercede for his people.

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    Sermon transcript

    Turn with me now to the Scriptures as we open our Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11 this morning. Our Scripture reading is Hebrews 11, verses 1 through 16. Hear the inspired Word of God, Hebrews 11, beginning with verse 1. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

    For by it, the men of old gained approval. By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. God testifying about his gifts and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death. And he was not found because God took him up. For he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God. And without faith, it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.

    By faith, Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

    By faith, even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, there was born even of one man and him as good as dead at that as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. All these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

    For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

    Thus far, the reading of God’s inspired word. Will you pray with me? Father, once again, we come to you asking, that the word of truth, the word of scripture, the word inspired by your own spirit would be a word imprinted upon our hearts and minds even today, that you by the grace of the spirit who moved the writer of old to write these words would now illumine us with understanding and grace, the grace of faith to accept this word as a word for us, a word of instruction, a word of encouragement, a word of exhortation, a word of truth, that we would act upon it, and that we would know the freedom that belongs to the children of God. Our Father, bless the reading, the preaching, the hearing of your word today. Grant power from on high. We ask it together now, in Jesus’ name, amen.

    This morning, we take up the question, what is faith? Our text is Hebrews 11, one through 16, which we have read. But by way of introduction in the sermon, I ask you to open your Bibles again, this time to Hebrews chapter 10, where I will begin reading from verse one of chapter 10 of Hebrews. Here, we meet the superiority of the new and better covenant in comparison to the old covenant. Hear with me then the word of God, Hebrews 10 and verse one.

    The writer of Hebrew writes, for the law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very forms of things can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would not they have ceased to be offered because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins year by year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when he comes into the world, he says, sacrifice an offering you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, you have taken no pleasure.

    Then I said, behold, I have come, in the scroll of the book it is written of me, to do your will, O God. After saying above sacrifices and offerings and whole burn offerings and sacrifices for sin, you have not desired nor have you taken pleasure in them, which are offered according to the law. Then he said, behold, I have come to do your will. He takes away the first in order to establish the second.

    By this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet. For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

    And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us For after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws upon their heart and on their mind, I will write them. He then says, and their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more. Now, where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

    Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he has inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.

    Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the son of God and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has insulted the spirit of grace? For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

    But remember the former days when after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations. and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

    For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. At first sight, it would appear that the comforts and joys of the new covenant outlined in Hebrews chapter 10 are then by the end of the chapter negated by the terrible threats and warnings that are associated with the judgment seat of Christ, the son of God.

    The inspired author of Hebrews certainly has, we can tell, a deep conviction of the awesome holiness of the divine majesty and of the divine majesty of the Son of God, Jesus. It is a terrifying thing, he says in verse 31, to fall into the hands of the living God. These words of verse 31 have no doubt been used frequently as a warning to the ungodly of what lies in store for them unless they amend their ways. We ourselves, upon hearing these words, it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We ourselves are undone by them.

    Who can possibly stand before this righteous King? And then we come to verses 32 to 39 of chapter 10, where we see that the primary application, even in this reference to the judgment, the primary application is to the people of God. It is given to you, dear people of God, to see the greatness and the holiness of God, reminding you that the fear of the Lord truly is the beginning of wisdom.

    It is in this light that we understand the serious warnings against apostasy that are found throughout the epistle of Hebrews. Calvin’s commentary at this point is most instructive. He says, quote, warnings and admonitions are the very means which God employs to secure the final salvation of his people. And to conclude from such warnings that they may finally fall away is by no means a legitimate argument, end of quote.

    In other words, the author of Hebrews does not wish to discourage his readers, but rather to embolden them so that they will emerge victorious from the present growing test of their faith. This he does now in the first place by reminding them of how they in former days stood a severe test that in the earlier days of their life as Christians, not long after their having been enlightened, verse 32. enlightened through the knowledge of the truth of the gospel, the wonders and the awesomeness of the new covenant realities, including Christ’s awesome throne. Then, as offered in the early part of Chapter 10, are actually meant to prepare us for Chapter 11. Hence, we read those words for our introduction this morning.

    And what this spirit-inspired exhortation as a whole, the book of Hebrews, has to say to us about faith, whereas the Apostle Paul in the New Testament usually represents the believer’s faith, as an external instrument, the instrument of justification by which the righteousness of Christ is imputed to those who believe, he doesn’t exhaustively or exclusively speak of faith in those terms, for Paul does also speak of walking by faith as distinguished from walking by sight.

    Faith in the New Testament, faith in the book of Hebrews, is the great spiritualizing principle. For faith is the state of mind that keeps us in touch with the higher world. Therefore, does the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews speak of faith as being, quote, assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

    There is indeed a close connection between faith and hope. There is such a thing as hope of the imagination, mere externalistic wishful thinking. But there is also a hope closely joined to faith, a hope which goes straight to the root of things, that is to the promises of God.

    This is the faith spoken of here in chapter 11. This same point of view is also found in the Apostle Peter. For example, in 1 Peter 1, verse 21, where he writes, which we may correctly render in that text, that your faith might also be hope in God, faith and hope closely joined together. In connection with the subject of faith here, the writer of Hebrews also dwells at length on patience under persecution and in the midst of tribulation. This is connected with what we have called the same spiritualizing principle of faith.

    Patience is a term characteristic even of Stoic philosophy. But in Stoicism, patience is sheer willpower to hold out and bear up. We should note, however, the etymological meaning of the Greek word for patience. Hippomonene, which means to keep under. That is, to keep the mind under and not to be ruled by it.

    But Christian patience is not merely a suppressing of powers. Rather, there is, in Christian patience, another power which enters into the believer’s life to offset the power of persecution and of tribulations. This new power comes to him through faith, an application of the Holy Spirit’s work in new covenant grace. Thus, through the exposition and application of Christ as priest and sacrifice of the new covenant, the Book of Hebrews earnestly appeals for the Christian community to apply the blessing of Christ’s high priestly ministry to your own daily life. In light of what Christ has done and is doing, the only rational and godly response is faith, to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

    When J. Gresham Machen’s little book, What is Faith?, was published in 1925, The modernist fundamentalist controversy was raging in all-out war. Machen and those who stood with him took their stand on the reliability of the inspired word of God. In the opening lines of his book, Machen writes, Quote, the question, what is faith, which forms the subject of the following discussion, may seem to some persons impertinent and unnecessary.

    Faith, it may be said, cannot be known except by experience. And when it is known by experience, logical analysis of it and logical separation of it from other experiences will only serve to destroy its power and its charm. Quote from Machen. Modernism’s attack on biblical authority comported with an anti-intellectual skepticism that refused to acknowledge God’s revealed authoritative truth.

    Machen observes, again, quote, indeed, nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day than an insistence upon definition of terms. Anything, it seems, may be forgiven more readily than that. Men discourse very eloquently today, Machen says, upon such subjects as God, religion, Christianity, atonement, redemption, faith.

    But they are greatly incensed when they are asked to tell in simple language what they mean by these terms. They do not like to have the flow of their eloquence checked by so vulgar a thing as a definition. And so they will probably be incensed by the question which forms the title of the present book. What is faith? In the midst of our current celebrations of faith, usually faith contrasted with knowledge, it seems disconcerting to be asked what faith is.

    While you were not there, beloved, in 1925, nor were you there in 1936, but you, beloved, as Orthodox Presbyterians, have taken your stand with Machen outside the mainline camp in time. And many of you have suffered for it, suffered much for it. And I would just say to you, in the years that have intervened since then, Postmodernism has not made things better. Skepticism and relativism have only increased in culture and even in the church. And more and more folks have become impatient with and intolerant of intellectual confessional Christianity.

    So it is that the plea of this sermon today is a call to faithfulness, a call to endurance. Let it be said of this congregation, Grace Church, that faith is still a trusting response to God’s word. Faith clings to the reality of promises that are not yet seen. Faith then, by definition, is forward and upward looking. Faith has an end in view.

    Significantly, many of those persons listed in Hebrews 11 are men and women who persevered in their faith even in the face of suffering and even death. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and the rest. All these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

    For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, and he has prepared a city for them. May that, beloved, speak to you today, Grace Church.

    And remember, for without faith it is impossible to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. The Heidelberg Catechism, a very faithful and reliable summary of the Reformed and Biblical faith. In question number 21, ask the question, question 21 of the Heidelberg Catechism, what is true faith? It answers, True faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in his word is true, it is also a deep-rooted assurance, created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel, that out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. That is, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, for by it the men of old gained approval. Therefore, beloved, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.

    For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction. but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

    And since we do have a great high priest over the house of God, let us, beloved, draw near with a sincere heart in the full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope and that without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and to good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

    Amen. Let’s pray together. Our Father, we are reminded that ours is to believe, to believe your word, to believe your promises, to believe those things that have been revealed concerning your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest, whose once for all sacrifice on the cross has paid for our sin, all our sin, so that we can with confidence approach the throne of grace for mercy. knowing Christ has loved us and that he continues even now to intercede and mediate for us.

    Our Father, we pray that we would not grow weary. We pray for endurance. We pray for that endurance that perseveres and overcomes. We pray that for ourselves. We pray it for our children and for our children’s children. We pray it for Grace Church. We pray it for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Father.

    We ask that we might press on in gospel hope, faith that is secured by an everlasting hope, a certain hope according to the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray and give thanks. Amen. I invite you to turn with me in our hymnal to hymn number 424.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Lift Your Drooping Hands

    Lift Your Drooping Hands

    About this sermon

    A Morning Instruction class on Hebrews 12:7-17. God disciplines his children as a father does, for their good, so that they may share his holiness; discipline is painful at the time but yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. So believers are to lift their drooping hands and strengthen weak knees, for one another on the way as well as for themselves, making straight paths so the lame are healed. They are to strive for peace and holiness and see that no one falls short of the grace of God, as Esau did.

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    Sermon transcript

    Chapter 12, and we’ll read beginning with verse seven. I’m gonna read verses seven through 17. Hebrews 12, verses seven through 17. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live?

    For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

    Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled, that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent. though he sought it with tears.

    Let’s pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, help us to persevere, to submit gladly to your discipline through the trials that come into our life. Help us to see these things as your work in our lives. And help us that we may hear your word readily and promptly that we may hear while you are speaking to us, that today when we hear your voice, we may respond with faith and joy. Help us to walk in your ways and forgive our sins for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

    All right, last week we covered chapter 12, verses 7 through 11. in which the author explains the quotation from Proverbs that preceded that in verses five and six. And just a brief review, the explanation of these five verses falls into three sections.

    Verses seven and eight speaks about the nature of sonship, a contrast between true sonship and illegitimate sonship. And the point was that it is the very nature of being a child or a son to receive discipline. It goes with the territory. The second section here was verses 9 and 10, where the focus was the nature of fatherhood.

    And again, we have a contrast, the contrast between earthly fathers and our heavenly father. We respected our earthly fathers, shall we not respect our heavenly father? Our earthly fathers disciplined us in two ways, for a short time, and as best they knew how, as well as they could. But in contrast to that, our heavenly father disciplines us with eternal life in view, A discipline that lasts for at least for a lifetime and has in view eternal life. And also a discipline that truly is for our good, not merely what seems to be a good idea at the time.

    What God aims at is what was really good for us and he really can accomplish it. And this aim is described in these verses as sharing in his holiness. an astonishing gift to share in God’s holiness. And as we’ll see as we proceed into the section for today, holiness is both a gift and something that we are to strive for. And remember the words of Augustine who says, God, command what you will, yet give what you command. And that idea is present in this very text. God commands us to strive for holiness, and yet that is also his gift. He gives us his holiness.

    That leads us to verse 12 as we proceed into the new part for today. Verse 12 begins with therefore, indicating that we’re going to have a further elaboration or explanation of what has gone before. In particular, we’re going to have a series of exhortations or commands. And in the context, you’re to see this as how you are to respond to God’s discipline. Okay, we get it. We’re supposed to see God’s discipline in our lives. We’re supposed to submit to it. We’re supposed to receive it gladly. Well, how do I do that? And these commands are part of the answer to that. Here is how. you respond to God’s discipline in your life.

    Verse 12 begins with an image that is carried through verse 13. The image of strengthening hands and knees, or lifting up drooping hands. This is a paraphrase of Isaiah 35, verse three. And I think it would be helpful for you to have Isaiah 35 open. We’re going to refer to it in a little more detail later on. But initially, we look at Isaiah 35, verse 3, which says, strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. The context of Isaiah 35 is directly relevant to what the author of Hebrews is speaking about here in Hebrews 12.

    In the context, Hebrews 35.3 is an encouragement to Israel in the day of trouble and trial to hope for his deliverance. In other words, we’re talking about the same context, discipline, trial, difficulty. And in the midst of that discipline, trial, and difficulty, this command goes out, a prophetic command, strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.

    Now keep your hand in Isaiah 35, but for a few moments here, let’s focus on what this metaphor or image is conveying to us. It is a continuation of the athletic metaphor that has been going on all through this first section of Hebrews chapter 12. We saw it at the end of verse 11, a fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it, it’s suggesting athletic training. And here we have an image of an athlete in trouble.

    Think about the metaphor of drooping hands. When a runner drops his hands to his sides, what does that imply? Have you ever seen a runner running a race with his hands down by his sides? No. Drooping hands suggests defeat, being tired out, stopping. So lifting the drooping hands means, in the context here, it means coming back into the race, not stopping.

    And of course, weak knees is pretty obviously another way that a runner will stop. You see somebody starting to hobble, limping, they are all ready to stop. Think of a football player being escorted off the field and gingerly stepping on a broken leg or an injured leg. So again, the weak knees are, as I said, an image of one who is either stopping or about to stop in his race.

    Now, the reality behind the metaphor is also fairly evident. If in your Christian race, your hands are drooping, then you are giving up on what God wants you to do. Your hands are the metaphor in the scriptures for accomplishing things, for doing work. If your knees are giving out, then in the reality of the Christian life, you’re not going where God wants you to go.

    And so the imagery is, I think, very direct. But now what about this image of strengthening the, or lifting the drooping hands and strengthening the weak knees? What does that correspond to? There’s another text in the Old Testament that uses this imagery. It’s Job chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. And I think this is helpful in understanding what the imagery implies. This is near the beginning of Job when Job’s so-called comforters first arrive on the scene. And one of them, Eliphaz the Temanite, says this to Job in chapter 4, verses 3 and 4.

    Behold, you have instructed many and you have strengthened the weak hands. Your words have upheld him who was stumbling and you have made firm the feeble knees. Notice the connection between these images of strengthening weak hands and making firm the feeble knees, the connection of those images to the idea of instruction. that Job was not only a righteous man, but he instructed and encouraged others to live righteously, instructed and encouraged others to follow the Lord’s ways. And therefore, lifting the weak hands and strengthening the weak knees is an image for instruction and being instructed, for encouragement and being encouraged in the ways of the Lord.

    And not merely a theoretical instruction, an abstract instruction so that we know certain ideas and doctrines, but a practical instruction, an instruction that bears fruit in one’s life. The imagery then goes on in verse 13. Keep your hand in Isaiah 35 still. The image goes on in verse 13 to speak about following a straight road. Make straight paths for your feet.

    Now think about the opposite of that. If you’re running on an uneven, rocky ground, you’re running on a path that has not been leveled for transportation, guess what kind of problems you’re going to have? You’re much more likely to have knee problems and leg problems if you’re running through this difficult terrain. And therefore, what the image is to convey to us is that the straight and level road is the place where we are designed to run. The straight and level road is the place where it is easier to run and that is less likely to cause injury. The straight and level road, of course, is the way of holiness, the way of enduring trial patiently and doing what pleases God. So the imagery about what is lame may not be put out of joint. I suppose you are running along the road, along the highway, and you begin to get a little lame.

    You’re suffering some injury. Is it a good idea to run off the road into the bushes, into the rocky ground, into the hills and potholes of the rough terrain? Then you’re asking for a further injury to make your condition worse, for your knees to be put out of joint.

    So the only answer to that is if you’re suffering in your pathway, that the only thing to do is to stay to that level pathway, to stay on the level highway so that you may be healed. Now, I think that imagery is helpful in what the author is saying, but it suggests something more than that. Runners know that if you’re having shin points or something and you just keep running on the highway, you’re not going to get healed that way. It’s safer for you than running in the rough, rocky terrain, but it’s not in itself a way of healing.

    And the suggestion here then is that there’s something about this highway that is not at all ordinary. This is not merely a generic image about the benefits of running on level ground. There’s something more going on there. And I think Isaiah 35 is gonna help us with this. But pause just for a few moments yet before we turn back to Isaiah 35. Because I want you to notice that the imagery throughout this section brings into view that we are not running in this race by ourselves. but we are running on this highway with fellow believers.

    In the Greek language, the pronouns for you are distinguished between singular and plural. In other words, there’s a different word for singular you and for another word for plural you. Sort of like the southerners, you know, you singular and you all for plural. They picked up on something useful in grammar to be able to distinguish those two, but it’s very, you know, it’s very evident in Greek that what is being said here is in the plural in verse 13, your feet is plural. So the author is addressing the church as a whole. And in fact, I haven’t drawn attention to this before, but throughout Hebrews 12, The imperative verbs are plural. You can distinguish between singular and plural among verbs as well. And we have the pronoun you plural at other places in verses 3 and 4 of the chapter. And the plural we appears also in verse 1 and verse 9 and later in the chapter.

    So the command is not simply something that is addressed to God’s people so that each of them individually should follow or obey the command. But what we are being commanded here is to do this with and for each other, implying that we are to help each other along the way. We’re not in this alone. We are in this with God’s people.

    And therefore, when he says, Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees. He’s not just calling for each individual Christian to shape up and start running again. He’s calling on us to do what Eliphaz told Job that Job had done. That you have instructed and encouraged many and strengthened the weak hands is not simply something he had done for himself, but he had encouraged and strengthened others.

    And therefore, that is part of our Christian duty. As we see each other struggling in the way, ready to fall, ready to faint, drooping hands, weak knees, we ought to come alongside and give encouragement to pray with and for others. As we heard in the baptismal vows last week, Will you pray with and for this child as he grows? Well, in a similar way, will we pray with and for each other that our drooping hands may be lifted, our weak knees may be strengthened?

    Now, finally, back to this marvelous highway that is much more than simply a generic image of the benefits of running on level ground. Return to Isaiah 35 and work your way down to verses 8 through 10. The author has quoted or paraphrased Isaiah 35, 3, but I think he had read further down in this chapter, as you will see. Isaiah 35, 8 through 10.

    And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, It shall belong to those who walk on the way. Even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it. They shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing. Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

    The second half of Isaiah, the latter part of the prophecy of Isaiah, has a recurring theme of a highway. This is perhaps the most explicit place in the prophecy where it is described, but at various other places through this whole latter section of Isaiah, the theme of the highway emerges. And sometimes it’s the highway for God’s people, and other times it’s the highway for the Lord himself, as in Isaiah 40, verses three and four, very familiar words, especially if you’re familiar with Handel’s Messiah, it’s one of the texts that is set to music in that oratorio. Isaiah 40, verse three and four says, A voice cries, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

    Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill made low. The uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain. This is an image of civil engineering, of earth moving, How do you make a highway? You know, think about, you can get an image of this, you think about when you’re driving down the interstate and you see this big cut through a hill. And then when you get through the hill, you’re up on an embankment above the level of the valley. That’s precisely the image that is being given here, the rough places being made plain, but also the valleys lifted up, the mountains made low. in order to make this royal highway so that this king will not have to exert himself to go up the hills and worry about slipping down the other side of the hill, going down into those valleys where there might be some bogs and mud and so on. This is going to be a royal highway for the king to approach. But amazingly, that royal highway is also for the people of God.

    Back in Isaiah 35, the way of holiness. Now, the correspondence is not perfect here with Hebrews, but I think there is something very similar going on in Isaiah as in Hebrews. There is a pathway that the Lord follows, and then his people follow him on it afterwards. You know what I’ve been saying about the overall structure of Hebrews is that it teaches us about how Jesus followed this path to the right hand of the Father, and that he is explicitly described in Hebrews as the forerunner. So if we’re thinking about this image of running and walking on the highway, not only are we not alone, but we have a forerunner. Jesus has already gone along this highway, and he’s gone to the right hand of the Father, and that’s where we’re going too. And therefore, I think it’s appropriate to see that the whole message of Hebrews, and in particular this part of Hebrews, is informing us about what Isaiah was prophesying. This is a way of holiness that is not simply a level road. It’s a way where the ravenous beasts are kept off of it. And the unclean cannot walk on it. And think of that image of cleanness and uncleanness in the scriptures.

    The whole idea of priesthood and offering that is so prominent in Hebrews brings with it this idea of cleanness versus uncleanness, holiness versus defilement. The priest has to be holy. He has to be set apart from ordinary men in order to perform his duties. The priest has to offer something that is holy. If something is defiled or ceremonially unclean, it cannot be offered to God.

    And likewise, the purpose of our lives is to be an offering to God and to make an offering to God. We are to be priests, a nation of priests. And in order to do that, we need to be made holy. God needs to set us apart. Because the unclean, the unholy, are not allowed on this way of holiness. They’re not allowed on this path. They’re not going to be on the path that goes to heaven. There’s yet another connection between Hebrews and Isaiah 35, and that is the destination. The destination of the way of holiness in Isaiah 35 is described as Zion.

    I’ll let your eyes drop down a few verses in Hebrews 12, verse 22. But you have come to Mount Zion. And in this long list of things that he’s gonna tell you about that you have come to, first on the list, Mount Zion. I believe this is informing us of what Isaiah was really prophesying. Isaiah was not simply talking about an annual pilgrimage to the Jerusalem that is on earth. He was talking about a lifelong pilgrimage to the Jerusalem above. He was talking about going to the heavenly Zion.

    And there’s certainly a strong hint of that in Isaiah 35, 10 when he says, When you get there, you will have everlasting joy. Is that just sort of an exaggeration? You know, it’s so nice to be in Zion here on Earth that it’s like everlasting joy? No, there’s something real there. He’s speaking about a joy that really will be everlasting and eternal.

    So I find the imagery of Isaiah as a wonderful fleshing out or filling out of this imagery in Hebrews chapter 12. And in the other direction, Hebrews chapter 12 is shedding light on what the prophecy in Isaiah really meant. All right, let me pause there if you have some questions or comments on 12 and verses 12 and 13. Good observation. This is not confined to Hebrews 12 and Isaiah 35. This is a biblical theme that comes up in various places.

    There’s a way that the godly follow. There’s a path that they follow that the world doesn’t follow. What’s glorious about this image and the way this is spoken of is that this is a supernatural path. This is a path that is guarded by God. This is a path that works healing. Again, getting back to what I mentioned before, how is it that the weak knees are going to be healed? It’s not in the nature of just walking on level ground that heals you. But this is a road that heals. The road is glorious. It’s a supernatural road. This is a road that leads to healing.

    But what about the discipline along the road? The implication is that discipline means staying on the road. And that God’s discipline is meant to keep you on the road. And if that is the case, then what should we think about this discipline? This discipline is meant to keep us in the safest place that we can be. This discipline is meant to keep us in the place that makes us whole, that leads to healing. This discipline is meant to keep us on the road that goes to Zion, meaning the heavenly Zion. So should we chafe and be upset about God’s discipline? That would be insane. It would be foolish. Why would I want to give up on that discipline? Pastor Knox, you were about to make another comment here. Yes, Jim, I’m seeing another layer to this text, another connection, I think, that is helpful.

    And it arises particularly out of verse 13, this idea of seeking at the limits of blame, I mean, not to be put out of joint, but rather to be healed. And that being put out of joint strikes a bell with me in terms of something Pam and I were reading devotionally last night called Genesis, where Jacob has this encounter with God after his sojourn, his time with Laban, he’s returning now to the land, and he has this wrestling match with God, and what happens?

    He leaves that wrestling match with a hip joint that is out of joint, and he’ll live perpetually with that limb, as it were, thereafter. There are several connections here I’m seeing, but going back to the idea of the legitimate son, how might we say Jacob is the legitimate heir? I mean, he supplanted his brother. He took the place of Esau, and you see it in the context here, reference to Esau down in verse 16, which would suggest to me that Jacob is also in view of this text. That Jacob is the heir according to promise, And he’s on his way at the time of this wrestling match, he’s on his way, if you will, back to the promised land, the land that he is now the rightful heir according to God’s promise.

    And in meeting with God and wrestling with the angel, he is coming certainly under the discipline of the Lord. If he would forever have that, to the remainder of his life, he would have that limb to remind him of that wrestling match. of that encounter with the Lord.

    So here is the legitimate heir, and yet one who has certainly come under the discipline of God. And think of those 14 years that he labored for Laban to get his wives and his plots and his children. He found his way back to receive the land that God had promised to him according to the covenant. And yet Jacob is the legitimate heir. He is the lawful heir according to promise, according to what God has declared.

    And yet Jacob is the one who must undergo the discipline of the Lord that he would prove to be a true son, not the perpetual supplanter, not the perpetual deceiver, but the true and legitimate son. Look at verse 14. Pursue peace with all men. What does Jacob have to do upon his return to the land? The first thing he has to do is encounter his brother Esau, and be reconciled to Esau.

    There’s wonderful connections here, I think, with historical connections in this text. Jumping off the page here so much, I’ve not read this in a commentary, so it’s not on the tip of my tongue, but I’m trying to organize it and offer it to you for some reflection and thought.

    But I think it’s rich. I think it’s true. I think it’s legitimate. I think it is what’s going on. Here is the true son being brought, by the way, back to the land, the land of Thomas, but yet Jacob is the son who must undergo the discipline of the Lord that he would prove not only to be the son according to promise, but the son according to a real righteousness, a real transformation of life and character, that he would become the true Israel as it were. Well, thank you, Dan. I don’t know if I should add anything to that, but I think, would you agree that The imagery is of Jacob not only having this hip put out of joint, but he’s able to walk afterwards. And so there is a healing in a way. Yeah, that he is restored. Okay, thank you very much.

    Other comments before we move on? The other thing strikes me in reference to your earlier comments, Jim, is not Isaiah preaching to an Israel that needs to be called back to that way, to be called to be the legitimate and true Israel. I think there’s a connection there. Okay. Thank you. All right. So let’s, shall we move on to verse 14 and versus sure.

    I’ve always considered in light of that text, referring to Jacob, that my earlier idolatry for the sport of football, the Lord has left me with a continuing knee and ankle problem. I had a dislocated ankle. I had a torn ligament in my knee. And so the Lord has left me with a decided limp and stiff knees in my old age as a reminder of that former idolatry that I lived for as a child.

    Well, I’m glad you’re one person who sees it that way. We have so many people up here watching the speakers, and it’s very important to idolatry all. And I’m glad somebody else sees it that way. Now, there, you’re left off preaching, and now you’re meddling. Good observation. That’s idolatry of our neighborhood.

    I was really offended when one Sunday the preacher came, here he was in his steeler jacket, and I thought, well, he wants to be a steeler’s man, that’s fine, but why wear that to church? To me, that’s very priceless, or it shouldn’t be. Point well taken. I don’t think you will have a Super Bowl party here at Grace Church. Well, let’s return to the text here.

    We won’t have a time to complete this section today, but verses 14 through 17 are a series of commands that further elaborate and explain what has gone before. As the pastor has already pointed our attention to verse 14, we are directed there to pursue two things, peace and holiness.

    There are two things in the Greek text that are not immediately apparent in the translation but are helpful to understanding this. In the Greek text, the word peace is the first word of the sentence. And being in that position, it places great emphasis on peace.

    And secondly, the verb in Greek is a strong verb. It means to pursue something strongly or vigorously. It is a verb that is more commonly used in the New Testament for persecute. So when you read someone’s persecuting, it’s this verb, and the connection is that when you’re persecuting somebody, you’re chasing them down, you’re running after them, you’re on their back.

    So here’s that concept or that notion or image is here as well. Pursue this strongly. Stay on this. Wear peace out, as it were. Follow it strongly. Now why the emphasis first on peace? The peace is with all. The translations may add the word men, pursue peace with all men. The ESV is a little more precise here or literal, strive for peace with everyone. But in the context in which this is presented to us, I believe the all or everyone refers to the people of God.

    And that the command has to do with how are we to travel along this way of holiness? As I’ve pointed out, we’re not traveling on it by ourselves. We’re traveling on it with the people of God. Now, are we supposed to be poking and jabbing each other along the way and knocking each other off the road? tripping people up and getting into fistfights along the way of holiness. No, the way of holiness is the way of peace and the peace among all of God’s people.

    Now remember, when the Bible speaks about peace, it doesn’t mean a sort of indifference or weakness in the face of trouble or evil. Evils have to be addressed forthrightly. If someone is offending, they have to be addressed in some way. So pursuing peace doesn’t mean just putting up with whatever happens. Pursuing peace can require painful confrontation, can require difficult times of reconciliation. So there’s something, not just something, there’s a wide variety of things that are being commanded here. This is a big umbrella that requires a whole pattern of behavior, a whole way of life of seeking the good of our brothers and sisters in Christ, seeking to live in true peace with them.

    Another way to think about this is that we have to do the things that promote healing rather than injury among our brothers and sisters. We have to behave in a way that promotes that healing, which has been spoken of in verse 13, rather than provoking further injury. And we are traveling together, and peace is essential to that traveling together, and moreover, Peace is essential to that second thing in this verse, to holiness.

    Holiness is not a standoffish holier-than-thou attitude. Holiness in the body of Christ includes our relationships with each other. In fact, that’s the main arena in which that holiness is exhibited. So peace and holiness being brought together here is not at all accidental.

    But now as we turn to that second thing that we are to pursue, the holiness, again, think of the whole context of Hebrews in which the idea of holiness has so many connotations. In the Bible, holiness fundamentally means something that is set apart. More specifically, something that is set apart to God, something that’s consecrated to God is holy. In view of the emphasis in Hebrews on priesthood, holiness here should remind us of how the priest had to be consecrated to God. Remember, how Aaron and his sons were consecrated and set apart to the priesthood in the Old Testament. And again, as I mentioned earlier, it also reminds us of the holiness of what is offered. The offering that the priest makes is also something that is set apart, that is consecrated to God.

    And if something is defiled or unclean or defective, it cannot be offered to God. In this light then, holiness is exactly what we need in order to live in the presence of God. When he says, strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord, he is speaking precisely of that destination to which we are headed, that heavenly Zion. How are you going to stand in the presence of God without being consumed? Only in the righteousness of Christ, But in addition to that, or as an outgrowth of that, would it be better to say, as an outgrowth of that, your own consecration to God is necessary. You have to have this holiness if you are to stand in the presence of God. Which leads us to the question, is this holiness something that we are given by God or something that we must work for?

    And the only answer to that question is yes. As with many supposed disjunctions or mutually exclusive alternatives that seem to be mutually exclusive on the surface, in the end, they are compatible and have to go together. So it is true both, at the same time it is true that both the holiness is a gift of God and that it is something we strive for. The whole teaching of Hebrews up to this point has emphasized the former, that it is the gift of God.

    It is what God has given to us through Christ’s priestly service. But in the immediate context, we have just seen verse 10 telling us that it was God’s purpose and God’s work in disciplining us to make us holy. Nevertheless, when we get here to verse 14, it is undeniable, it slaps us right between the eyes, that our effort is required. that God is going to do this, God is going to bring this holiness about partly through our own efforts, and strenuous effort, a strong pursuit, a diligent pursuit of holiness. Calvin comments in this context, it’s actually a comment on the next verse, but quite relevant to what we’re looking at here, he says this.

    From precepts and exhortations, we are not to infer what man can do of himself, or what is the power of free will, for doubtless the attention and diligence which the apostle requires here is the gift of God. Just because you’re doing it doesn’t mean it’s not the gift of God. You’re doing it, but it is simultaneously the gift of God. I think this will be a good place to wrap up for today with one other parallel text. We are not to strive as if it were all up to us, as if we were trying to add something to our salvation or to achieve something of merit before God.

    Rather, we are to strive to enjoy in all its fullness what God is giving us and has given us. And one of the most striking texts in the New Testament that brings these things together is Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13. We’ll begin in the second half of verse 12. Philippians 2, 12b through 13 tells you this.

    Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Now, the reason I paused there in the middle is to give you at least a moment to reflect on what a tremendous command is being given to you here, what an awesome responsibility. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. And thanks be to God, there isn’t a period at the end of that phrase, but a comma. And what follows it is, it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. And not only does Paul bring these two things together, but he is actually saying that one of the motivations, perhaps the great motivation for us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling is the knowledge that God is at work in us. Do you know that God is at work in you?

    That should be the great spur and motivation for you to pursue holiness, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Striving for that peace and holiness then is not adding something to your salvation. It’s striving for the outworking of what God is working in us, striving for the fullness of what God is giving to us in our salvation. All right, let’s close there for today, but we’ll have a minute or two here if you have other questions or comments. All right, well, next week we will proceed with beginning in verse 15. Oh, a question.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Saving Faith

    Saving Faith

    About this sermon

    Hebrews calls believers to endure, because God’s righteous one lives by faith and does not shrink back. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, and it produces a way of life that holds to the whole counsel of God. Belief in the unseen is not belief without evidence; it rests on God’s word. Without faith it is impossible to please God, and saving faith trusts that he exists and rewards those who seek him, as the faithful of Hebrews 11 did.

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    My text this evening is found in Hebrews chapter 10, and it begins with verse 32. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 32, and we’ll read over to verse 6 in chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 10, 32. But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

    Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while, and a coming one will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

    Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it, the people of old received their commendation. By faith, We understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. 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 through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

    And by faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death. And he was not found because God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Thus far, the reading from God’s word. Our Heavenly Father, we pray that you will open our hearts to this word of God. Help us indeed to have that faith which saves us, saves our souls, And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

    The story is told of a husband and wife who were experiencing grave doubts concerning their faith in God. And this couple had grown up in the church where the congregation was urged to place their faith in God. And in this modern technological age, the couple felt that that was rather ridiculous, even foolish, to believe in a god that they could not see. Modern, highly educated people simply don’t waste their time and efforts on things that cannot be proven or for which, as they believed, there was little or no evidence. Now they came to their pastor for help. The pastor thought of presenting the great teleological and ontological apologies for the existence of God, but he decided on a course of utter simplicity. He posed the following question.

    What is the logical alternative to faith that God exists? Of course, the alternative is that God does not exist. Now, the assertion that God does not exist also requires faith to believe. Because there is relatively little evidence to support this contention. And that there is a God and that there is no God both require faith. In addition, on the side of the existence of God, there is a great abundance of evidence. And to use modern terms, the odds are greatly in favor of those who believe that God exists. Well, that was the pastor’s argument.

    It seems to me that this is a rather weak argument for believing in God. Many argue that it is logical and rational to believe that God exists, or that there is obvious design in the physical universe, and therefore a creator God must exist. And a lot can be said in favor of intelligent design, such as the impossibility of something coming from nothing, or the impossibility of order coming from chaos. However, such arguments are weak, in my view, because they do not inform us of the attributes of God, only that a divine being must exist and that he is powerful, to use the terminology in Romans chapter one, for example.

    Now, one cannot know from such a line of reasoning that it is logical and rational, you see, to believe in God. One cannot know from such a line of reasoning that God is a triune being, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And therefore, I wish to consider a much different approach to the problem of faith, and I want to obtain from our text in Hebrews the biblical view of faith, namely, the nature of saving faith, its importance, and the godly life that flows from it.

    Now, Webster defines faith as follows. Webster’s Dictionary. Allegiance to duty or a person, that’s faith. Fidelity to one’s promises. Belief and trust in and loyalty to God. Belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion. Firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Complete confidence. A system of religious beliefs believed with strong conviction.

    Well, this of course is a very general definition of faith, and as such, it leaves us with some very serious questions, such as, allegiance to whom? Belief and trust in which God? Belief in the doctrines of which religion? Upon whom or what can we place our complete confidence? Which religious beliefs shall we believe with strong conviction?

    Jude writes, you know Jude is only one chapter, so we read this in Jude verse three. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Well, here we understand that the faith is the entire Christian doctrine as it is comprehended in the Bible.

    And Paul writes in Galatians 2 20, I’ve been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God.

    Well, to say that Jesus is the son of God to the Hebrew mind is tantamount to saying that Jesus is God. And similarly, to say that one is a son of the covenant is to say that one is a son of a covenanter. I mean, a covenanter himself. Similarly, to say that one is the son of a prophet, a bene navi in Hebrew, is to say that he is a prophet. And so we’re arguing that to say that Jesus is the son of God is tantamount to saying that he is God. One who has faith in this sense, therefore believes, that Jesus is God, and that he loves me, that he died for me, and here faith is a deep trust in Christ for salvation.

    Without saving faith, there is no point to any other form of faith. The whole of Christian doctrine is of no use to the one who in the end loses his soul. And what gain is there by giving a lifetime of allegiance to or firm belief in a false god, in that which is but wood, hay, and stubble? In the end, false gods will be cast into hell for eternity, along with those who believe in them. And we must be certain that our faith is placed in the true God, and that the doctrines we adhere to are the truth, else, We may as well play the atheist, the fool who says there is no God, but there is yet another aspect to faith.

    And that’s found in our text this evening. In Hebrews chapter 10, verses 38 and 39, we read, but my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

    So here, faith produces a way of life. For the righteous one lives by faith. And faith in this sense produces a manner of living that is preservative. It is a manner of life that characterizes those who believe in the true God and who adhere to the whole counsel of God in the Bible.

    The psalmist expresses it in this way in Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by the streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. And all that he does, he prospers. Well, such a man is preserved by the lifestyle that is produced by his faith.

    According to our text in Hebrews, faith is belief in things that have never been experienced or seen. But faith is confident assurance of that which is being hoped for, we read there, and inner conviction of that which is not being seen, Now hope is a subjective thing, which is to say that we hope for what has not yet come to pass, or it is a thing which cannot be seen.

    The Christian hopes for forgiveness, which is a thing we cannot see. And forgiveness is based in the atonement made by Christ through his death on the cross, which we have not seen. We read in Hebrews 9, verse 27, and just as it is appointed for man once to die and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who eagerly wait for him. Well, none of this we’ve seen. We were not present at the cross, and his second appearing has not yet occurred.

    And yet the essence of saving faith is that we confidently believe these things. It’s just as Peter writes in 1 Peter 1, verse 8. Though you have not seen him, speaking of Jesus, though you have not seen him, you love him. And though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. We may never have seen these things, but God has promised them for yet a little while and the coming one will come and will not delay.

    And another promise, let us hold fast a confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. Or here is one, we have need for endurance so that when we have done the will of God, we may receive what is promised. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. That, of course, the first verse of Hebrews 11 in our text. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

    We were not present when God created the earth, nor have we any understanding of the way in which he brought forth the earth and the rest of the universe. An example of faith consists in a genuine belief that God created all that exists from nothing by the word of his power and all very good. In order for God to do this, we must assume that the true and living God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. The gods on Mount Olympia did not have the power to create all that is from nothing, and neither did Buddha or Zoroaster or Baal or any other so-called god have such power. If we cannot genuinely believe that the universe came to pass at the command of God who created from nothing, then the validity of our faith is called in question.

    We may, in fact, be placing our faith in the wrong God. It is very important to believe, to have faith in the true God, so much so that it is impossible to please God apart from faith that he exists and that he is active in his universe. Here again, the text before us. We read, without faith, it is impossible to please him, to please God.

    For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists. and that he rewards those who seek him. He exists and that he is active in his universe. Now we cannot believe the deist’s God because he is away on business. He’s not active in this universe. The deist’s God is not ruling and governing all his creatures and all their actions. A number of men who were instrumental in the formation of our country were deists. For example, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

    And since the scriptures teach that the true and living God is triune, that he is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that these three are one God and the same in substance and equal in power and glory, if we are to please the true and living God, we cannot place our faith in the God of the Mormons. or the God of the Jehovah’s Witness, for these gods are not triune.

    For the same reason, neither can we believe in the humanist’s God or the Unitarian’s God. We must believe in the God of the Bible, and we must believe that he is active and that he rewards those who seek him in order to please him. We cannot be saved if we are under the displeasure of God. We cannot be saved if we are His enemies. And therefore, true faith, saving faith, is vitally important to us. It is more important than anything else that we place our faith and trust in Yahweh, the great triune Lord of hosts.

    Belief in the unseen is not belief in something for which there is no proof. Let me read that again. Belief in the unseen is not belief in something for which there is no proof. We need not be resigned to existentialism. which entails a blind leap of faith in some sort of God, for which faith the odds are better than for a faith that there is no God. I say we need not be resigned to that which is known as existentialism. The Lord tells us the wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

    So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. Now we may not be able to see God, but we can certainly see the results of his work. Sinners are in fact converted, many of them, a great host of them. Great enemies of God have been turned to faith in the triune God. The very heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Psalm 19, 1. So much so that the ungodly and unrighteous who suppress the truth in unrighteousness have no excuse. That, of course, is Paul’s argument in Romans 1.

    We have never seen electrons. the very small part of an atom. And yet we know their mass, we know their electrostatic charge, and we are very certain of their existence. We can describe them in all their quantum mechanical glory. We know they exist, but we have never seen them. And we know they exist by the results of their existence.

    And just so, It is not a blind faith that pleases God, but an informed faith. It is not a blind faith that pleases God, but an informed faith. A faith that is informed by the data of scripture and the world around us in which God has made. Well, faith then believes in the unseen. And it is impossible to please God without it.

    We have not seen Christ, but many people have and have informed us in the pages of the Bible of the Christ in whom we are to believe unto salvation. And we’ve not seen heaven where Christ is. and from where he will come to judge the world on the last day. However, if we are ever to see Christ as he is, face to face, if we are ever to realize the blessed hope of eternal life in heaven, we must believe that the true and living God exists, and that he rewards those who seek him. As Paul told the Philippian jailer, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

    Well, that is faith that saves. That is saving faith. Now, such faith brings certain results. It produces a godly life. The quality of our faith in the triune God can be seen in the quality of our life measured in terms of God’s law. Speaking to people who lived in a society that believed all sorts of gods, James wrote in chapter two, verse 19, you believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? It is not enough to say, I believe in God. or to be a non-atheist. You see, saving faith produces a godly manner of living.

    By faith, Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain. Cain offered the meal offering, which was quite valid. His was the minakah of Leviticus chapter two. And the offering of Abel was also a valid sacrifice. He offered the chetath, or a sin offering. Now, Abel’s was better in the sense that God wanted them both to make the sin offering.

    And by faith, Abel obeyed God, but Cain did not. Enoch walked with God. and thus he obeyed God and his faith was found pleasing. Noah built the ark against all the wisdom and the advice of his day. He obeyed God and was found pleasing, becoming an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

    Abraham left Ur by faith, and with his eyes on eternal life in heaven, he offered Isaac as a sacrifice. And in this manner, Abraham proved his faith. Isaac and Jacob obeyed God openly, worshiping Yahweh in full view of a great civilization that worshiped any number of false gods. Moses suffered the reproach of Christ, considering this to be the greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. And so he serves as a model for Christians to endure such reproach. Joshua proved his faith at Jericho. Rahab proved her faith by hiding the spies and sending them out of Jericho another way.

    And what more shall I say, writes Paul. For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets who, through faith, conquered kingdoms and forced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness. became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.

    Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy. Wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised. since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect. Well, these are our witnesses, my friends.

    You say you have trouble believing on Christ for salvation. You say you doubt the existence of God. And as you sit in your science classes and hear the testimony of the world’s great scientists and engineers that all that is here came from a big bang in evolution, are you inclined in your heart toward their humanism? And do you doubt the Bible?

    You see, we are in a sort of race. It is very difficult to run by faith in a direction that is contrary to most of humanity. Look at the witnesses. They had faith in Yahweh, but at great cost. And don’t tell me that you are not affected by sin or by the opinions of great Americans or great world leaders in science and medicine or whatever it is. We are easily entangled by these things. Television is by far the greatest influence on the ethics and morality of civilization today. And the great majority of television programming is contrary. to the kingdom of Christ, and we are affected by it.

    How can we run this race with endurance? Paul writes, you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. He says again, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

    We can run this race with endurance if we fix our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If we consider Jesus, who endured such hostility by sinners against himself, we will not grow weary and we will not lose heart. So look to Jesus as your savior and your Lord. Look to Jesus as your example for living. So shall we be in God’s presence if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, receiving and resting upon him alone for salvation and out of a true sense of our sin to turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience, running with endurance the race that is set before us. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

    Our Father, we thank you for the word of God, which teaches us of true faith. in the Lord Jesus Christ, faith unto salvation, faith that saved us. And we pray, Father, that each one of us will again confess our faith and live our faith, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, believing in things that are not seen, but believing that God exists and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.