Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: Hebrews

A series on the book of Hebrews by our Pastoral Intern, Isaiah English.

  • Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy

    Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy

    About this sermon

    Hebrews 11 surveys the faithful of old: Abel, Enoch, Noah, the patriarchs, and those who conquered kingdoms or suffered torture and death by the saw, “of whom the world was not worthy.” Biblical faith is not mere positive thinking or self-confidence. It rests on God, who created the world by his word, and it endures suffering. The Old Testament believers did not receive what was promised, because God planned to perfect them together with the church. God saves a people, and all his saints reach their eternal goal together.

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    Sermon transcript

    Let’s turn now to the reading of God’s Word. And this evening we’ll be looking at, again, Hebrews chapter 11. The focus of our sermon this evening will be on verses 32 through 40. But to fill out the context, I’m going to read the whole chapter of Hebrews chapter 11. So starting in verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 11. 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.

    By faith, Enoch, when he was taken up so that he should not, he was taken up so that he should not see death and 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. By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

    By faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful, who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the thing’s promise, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers in exiles on earth. For people who speak thus make it clear, they are seeking a homeland.

    If they had been thinking of the land from which they had gone 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 for them a city. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, through Isaac shall your offspring be named. He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.

    By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch him.

    By faith, the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith, Rahab, the prostitute, did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Sampson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced 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 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. Amen. You may be seated. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we come to you this evening. We come and ask for your blessing, for your spirit, Lord. This word, which is life in and of itself, is dead to us apart from the working of your spirit. We ask that you would send your spirit, that your living word might become alive to us, that our hearts might hear it, receive it, believe it, accept it, treasure it, obey it.

    We ask that you might bless the preaching of your word, that it might be done in power and in truth. Lord, we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. One of my favorite scenes in Tolkien’s Return of the King, the Lord of the Rings, is partway through the Battle of Minas Tirith. Pippin and Gandalf are catching their breath as they prepare to make a stand to fight back the forces of Mordor, but Pippin has begun to despair. And he says, I didn’t think it would end this way. And Gandalf looked at him curiously. End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it. What, Gandalf? See what?

    White shores and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise. Well, that isn’t so bad. No. No, it isn’t. Although the orcs were on the doorstep, and much remained unrealized, Gandalf had hope, because he knew that there was more to the story. He had made sense of his fear, his horror, disappointment, even death, by remembering that there were more pages to come. He, unlike Pippin, knew that this was not the end. Gandalf’s faith enabled him to fight for victory, while at the same time to die well, if that were necessary, knowing that something better was coming. Pippin was beginning to despair because he lost sight of what was currently not visible. In that state, he would be unlikely to achieve either victory or to die well. But Gandalf’s words, of course, restored Pippin’s faith.

    This evening we come to the climactic close of Hebrews 11, the great hall of faith that has marched us from Abel’s altar to Abraham’s altar call, from Moses’s exodus to Rahab’s scarlet cord. The writer has been building a case. Faith is not a feeling. It’s the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And now, as time runs short, he crams centuries of heroism into a single breathless paragraph. We’ll consider what this passage has to say about three aspects of faith. Number one, the conquest of faith. How frail, flawed, even foolhardy men and women toppled kingdoms, stopped mouths of lions by looking to the invisible god. Number two, the suffering of faith. How the same faith that quenched fire also endured the back, the sword and the cave, because it prioritized a better resurrection.

    And number three, the incompleteness of faith. How every Old Testament saint, though commended, still waits with us for the final crown, because God has planned something better for us all together. So number one, the conquest of faith. As we look at our passage this evening, we see the power of faith particularly highlighted. Up to this point, faith’s power has not been very prominent. We have seen it undergird sacrifice, miracles, blessing, obedience, and facing fears. But the power of conquest has been downplayed until now. Verses 32 and 34. And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced 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.

    The writer of Hebrews has been detailing stories of faith, but now he begins to run short on time. If he were to continue at his previous pace and continue through the whole Old Testament, the book of Hebrews would probably be the longest book in the Bible. So he sums up his thoughts by briefly mentioning some key figures. He mentions three pairs of figures from the time of the judges to the time of the kings and prophets of Israel. And while the pairs are arranged chronologically with each other, within each pair we find them reversed. Chronologically we would have Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Samuel and David. A likely reason for the odd ordering that we find here is that the more well-known or prominent of each pair is mentioned first. Gideon is more well-known than Barak, Samson better known than Jephthah, and David better known than Samuel.

    Both Gideon and Barak are unlikely candidates to be mentioned in this lineup of faith, because their faith was frankly quite frail. Barak refused to go to fight unless Deborah went with him. And Gideon tried to reject God’s calling and tested God over and over. But their fragile faith and their commendation here can be an encouragement to us when our own faith is weak, because still God used them to conquer kingdoms and bring victory. Samson and Jephthah are unlikely candidates for different reasons. Whereas Gideon and Barak lacked courage, Samson and Jephthah have plenty. In fact, Samson and Jephthah’s boldness might be said to surpass courage and become foolhardiness. But the surprise of finding them in this hall of faith comes from their lack of piety. Jephthah was an outlaw, turning his ruthless battle savvy upon Ephraim as soon as his battle with the Amorites was over, not to mention his senseless sacrifice of his daughter in fulfillment of his foolish vow.

    Samson was of course a womanizer who couldn’t seem to control his lust or his temper, dying kamikaze style as he killed thousands of Philistines. And yet despite their moral failings, they sought God’s help. They depended on him. And thus their superhuman achievements of strength and victory are demonstrations of the power of faith. While David and Samuel make a lot more sense to be included in this hall of faith, they were not blameless in their piety either. David’s most famous fall involved adultery and murder, but he also issued a prideful census incurring God’s wrath upon the entire nation of Israel. And Samuel, while in many ways exemplifying piety from his youth, apparently failed quite badly in the raising of his sons and still insisted on appointing them to rule after him, prompting Israel to ask for a king instead.

    But once again, as we saw with the patriarchs earlier in chapter 11, the writer of Hebrews has his own specific point in mind. He’s ignoring flaws and he’s focusing on faith. And we can see it as we look at his description of what these heroes did by faith. Verses 3 and 34. Who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced 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, and put foreign armies to flight. Now all the individuals just mentioned demonstrated the power of faith to gain victory because instead of looking to what could be seen all around them, they looked to what was invisible. And they trusted the invisible God to bring that victory for them. All the previous mentioned figures could be said to have conquered kingdoms through their faith.

    And certainly David and Samuel in particular are those who enforced justice. Obtaining promises goes back to Abraham, most certainly, but also covers many of those others who obtained promises, as was already mentioned. And while David and Samson both are those who stopped the mouths of lions, most likely the author is thinking of the prophet Daniel, one of the prophets as we see mentioned after Samuel in verse 32. And immediately following the lions, we find the phrase quenched the power of fire, which most likely refers to Daniel’s three friends, which we read about earlier from Daniel 3, earlier in the service. Escaped the edge of the sword could refer to many individuals, including David, Elijah, Elisha, and notably Esther, with her the whole Jewish nation. Made strong out of weakness seems most obviously to be a reference to Samson, but to a lesser extent could be said of many of the others as well.

    The last two descriptors became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight, are exemplified in David, but can be seen in many kings that followed him, like Hezekiah with the Assyrians when the Lord put to death 185,000 in one night. All of these are impressive descriptions of the conquering power of faith. Faith is important for many things, but the writer especially here wants to focus in so that we don’t overlook its power to achieve victory. Now even secular psychology has recognized the importance of envisioning success for yourself and the role that that mindset has in determining your success. It might not guarantee a positive outcome, but it does make it more likely. However, with no belief in a divine creator, secular psychology attempts to explain all the benefits physiologically. It makes you more focused, calm, relaxed, poised for action, able to perform your best.

    But in the end, all it can offer you is a maximized you. But biblical faith is more than a positive outlook, more than a positive outlook on the situation or the confidence that you will succeed. David had some reason to have confidence in his abilities with his slingshot against Goliath, but in 1 Samuel 17, verses 45 to 47, his reason for fighting and his predicted victory was the invisible and powerful God of Israel. 1 Samuel 17, verses 45 and 47, Then David said to the Philistine, You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head.

    And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air, to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into my hand. The faith mentioned in Hebrews 11, displayed in the actions of these heroes, is not mere wishful thinking, hopeful projecting, or positive manifesting. It was a clear-eyed view, it is a clear-eyed view, of the invisible God whom they knew existed, and was willing and able to save them and give them the victory. Many of God’s victories involved his command for Israel to wait and see, wait and see what the Lord would do for them.

    But other times, fearful fellows like Gideon, were commanded to go into battle with inadequate forces. While the victory belongs to the Lord, Gideon calls his people to engage in the obedient fight of faith. The conquest of faith comes from the way that faith connects believers to the all-powerful, invisible God. Victory comes to those who put their trust in the God who saves. But there is another side of faith. While faith empowers impressive conquests, it does not always prevent suffering. Number two, we see the suffering of faith. Now, while the example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is impressive in the miraculous outcome, a conquest over the power of fire, they also serve as an example of the kind of mindset which faith gives, which enables endurance of suffering. Look again at Daniel chapter 3, verses 16 through 18.

    Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, that you will throw us into a burning fiery furnace, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace. And he will deliver us out of your hand, O King. But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship your golden image that you have set up. They had locked on to God’s ability to preserve them. But that same vision of the invisible God made them equally willing to endure the fiery furnace if necessary. And this is particularly what we see in Hebrews 11, verses 35 through 38. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so 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 caves of the earth. It would not do justice to the biblical stories or the original audience of Hebrews for the author to only mention the impressive victories achieved by faith. We saw a few weeks ago how Abraham received Isaac figuratively back from the dead in verse 19. But here the author mentions literal resurrections. While the author might have in mind some of the resurrections, which Jesus and some of the apostles performed, in this context it’s likely that he’s thinking of the Old Testament resurrections, like the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17, or Elisha and the Shunammite son found in 2 Kings 4.

    Much like Jairus would later deal with Jesus, even after her boy had died the Shunammite ran to find Elisha, believing that hope was not lost and God’s prophet could even raise the dead. Verse 35 serves as a bridge between the conquering power of faith and its willingness to endure suffering. Faith brought a boy back from the dead in Elisha’s case, but for many others they were looking for a better resurrection. Verse 35, women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so they might rise again to a better life. Now the ESV says rise again to a better life, which is a fine translation, but the expression in the Greek is actually more compact, more terse. It’s literally to obtain a better resurrection. We’ve already seen in our study of Hebrews that the term better is a key term for the author, a key expression which often means heavenly.

    Look back at verse 16, but as it is they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. We’ve seen this word better quite a few other times as well. One commentator says, these examples allow the author to employ one of his favorite terms, better, and introduce the idea of a better resurrection. He’s already reminded his audience that they have a better and lasting property than their earthly possessions in chapter 10, 34, and they’re looking forward to a better home. Chapter 11, verse 16. The superior quality of their reward corresponds to the status of their high priest, who is better than angels, chapter 1, verse 4, and offers a better sacrifice than those in the tabernacle, chapter 9, verse 23. The future resurrection is better for the same reason that Jesus is better. It is of an eternal quality.

    Those who came back to life through the ministries of Elijah and Elisha would eventually die, but the better resurrection is secured by Jesus’ decisive victory over death, end quote. Willing to undergo suffering unto death requires a sight of unseen realities. That courage comes from desiring a better resurrection. The original audience to the letter of the Hebrews were facing challenges to their faith, perhaps not physical harm, but certainly mocking, theft, vandalism, and potential imprisonment. There was only one way they were ever going to be willing to undergo suffering for their belief in Jesus. That was if they got in their heads that Jesus was worth more than anything else in this life and even life itself. We see the descriptions of those who endured great suffering by faith in verses 36 and 38. Others suffered mocking and flogging, 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 dens and caves of the earth. Some escaped the edge of the sword by faith, but others were killed with the sword by faith. But the final verdict on them comes in verse 38, of whom the world was not worthy. We might have expected this to be said of the heroes who accomplished astonishing feats of strength, performed miracles, or sent hordes of enemies packing. But the author offers this evaluation in the midst of a painful and shameful existence. I think of how John describes Jesus’ arrival in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 9 through 13.

    He says, The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, not of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The same world that didn’t recognize the worth of its own creator also didn’t recognize the worth of those who have faith in him. The sinful world didn’t deserve to be visited by Jesus Christ, and it does not deserve to have believers who are salt and light. If you are a believer, you are a gift to an undeserving world.

    Of course, you are an undeserving recipient of grace yourself, which comes to you by faith. But you are a gift to a world that will mock you, insult you, hate you, possibly even kill you. If you are a believer, if you are one who has faith that Jesus is better than anything you gain or lose, up to and including your life, you are a present, tangible part of God’s gift of his one and only Son, who was given so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life. Are you a member of this community of faith? Are you one of those who is commended to God by faith, or are you still condemned in your sins? Because of what Jesus has done, providing a better sacrifice that can offer real cleansing and forgiveness from sins, it is not too late to become one of those who will obtain a better resurrection.

    Everyone will be raised from the dead one day, but some will be raised to everlasting punishment, and some will be raised to everlasting life. God gives faith as a gift, and then he gives those who have faith as a gift. If you are a believer, you are a gift to a world that does not deserve it. The world didn’t appreciate the gift of Christ, and it didn’t appreciate those who believed in him. It rejected them, and it even killed them. But as one commentator says, their miserable status in this world is evidence, therefore, not of their lack of worth, but of the world’s lack of worth. The world fails to appreciate that which God does appreciate. When looked at by faith, by the world’s evaluation, those who hold on to faith appear worth nothing. But when looked at by faith, according to God’s evaluation, they receive the highest commendation.

    Yet, there is something missing. And so, number three, we see the incompleteness of faith in our passage. Look at verse 39. And they even remain so today. Well, why is that? Verse 40. As one commentator says, one would expect a Christocentric statement as an explanation for why the ancients did not receive the promise. Instead, the author makes an ecclesiocentric statement. The fundamental claim of the letter is that God’s climactic revelation has taken place in Jesus Christ. The implication is that the audience, those who believe in Jesus, are the recipients of God’s greatest work. The something better that God has provided by means of Jesus’ better sacrifice is for the whole people of God to reach their eternal goal together. We would expect the author of Hebrews to say something specifically about Jesus as the reason the Old Testament believers didn’t receive their full reward.

    But instead, the author of Hebrews says it has to do with the Church. The essence of God’s covenant of grace with those whom he saves is, I will be your God and you will be my people. While God knows and loves each of his children individually, his covenant is never expressed, I will be your God and you will be my person. His covenant with Abraham includes Abraham’s offspring from the very beginning. God’s covenant is particular, but it’s not small, it’s corporate and big. In the Jewish culture, that of the original readers of the letter to Hebrews, Old Testament figures like Adam, Moses, Abraham, Aaron, and David were highly esteemed. And it seems as though the audience was tempted, perhaps, to long for the old days and feel like their own time, their own lives were inconsequential in redemptive history.

    They came late to the game. Everything significant had already happened. We’ve seen the author of Hebrews spending a lot of time from the very first verse to establish the amazing significance of the time in which his first audience was living. In these last days, God has spoken to us by his son, he opens the book with. Rather than insignificant, his first readers were living in the most significant era of redemption. Christ, the fulfillment, the hope of all the Old Testament has come and done what all of the Old Testament types and shadows, who were pointing to him, never fully could do. I think sometimes we can have a similar nostalgia, even for, say, the time of Christ, when Christ walked the earth during his earthly ministry, and consider our own time, our own existence as boring, inconsequential in redemptive history.

    Everything significant has already passed, but that would be a mistake. While Jesus’ ministry on earth was powerful, and his death and resurrection are, of course, the focal point of all of history, God’s not done. Jesus said to his disciples that it was better that he went away, since he would send his spirit. We’re not living in a post-faith age, when everything significant has already happened. When the credits are rolling and the cleanup crew comes in, turns on the lights and starts vacuuming. We might not be putting foreign armies to flight, killing lions with our bare hands, conquering kingdoms, but the party can’t start without us. A pastor living in the late 300s, A.D., named John Chrysostom, preaches sermon on Hebrews chapter 11. And he elaborates on this idea. This quote is a little long and the language is old, but I think it is well worth our attention.

    He says, What then is the reward of so great a change? What is the recompense? They have not yet received it, but are still waiting. And after thus dying in so great tribulation, they have not yet received it. They gained their victory so many ages ago and have not yet received their reward. And you, who are yet in the conflict, are you vexed? Do you also consider what a thing it is and how great that Abraham should be sitting and the apostle Paul waiting till you have been perfected? That then they may be able to receive their reward. For the Savior has told them before that unless we also are present, he will not give it to them. As an affectionate father might say to sons who were well approved and had accomplished their work, that he would not give them to eat unless their brethren came.

    And are you vexed that you have not yet received the reward? What then shall Abel do, who was victor before all, who is sitting still uncrowned? And what Noah? And what they who lived in early times, seeing that they wait for you and those after you? Do you see that we have the advantage of them? For God, he says, has provided something better for us. In order that they might not seem to have the advantage from us being crowned before us, he appointed one time of crowning for all. And he that gained the victory so many years before receives his crown with you. Do you see his tender carefulness? And he did not say that they without us might not be crowned, but that they without us might not be made perfect, so that at that time they may appear perfect also.

    They were before us as regards the conflicts, but they are not before us as regards the crowns. He did not wrong them, but he honors us. For they also wait for the brethren, for if we are all one body, the pleasure becomes greater to this body when it is crowned altogether and not part by part. For the righteous are also worthy of admiration in this, that they rejoice in the welfare of their brethren as on their own. So that for themselves also, this is according to their wish, to be crowned along with their own members, to be glorified altogether is a great delight, end quote. It is a humbling thing, a humbling thought, that rather being late to the party as believers 2,000 years after Christ has died, we are part of the invited guests of whom the final consummation, of whom without which the final consummation will not come.

    And we’re not the only ones, so let us continue inviting others so that the wedding hall may be full. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, what a humbling and wondrous thing that you would write such words that those saints who have gone before us and done mightier acts of faith and deeds of conquest, conquered their fears, suffered unto death to receive the crown of glory that you would wait until all had been gathered. As you told the martyrs below beneath the altar to wait a little longer for the full number of their brethren had not yet come. Lord, we ask that you would empower and embolden us to invite those that your wedding hall might be full, and that we would not despise this time that we live in, but we would understand your purpose is on the cutting edge, that we are those without whom the party will not start, the great consummation, the wedding feast of the Lamb.

    Lord, we pray these things and give you thanks in Jesus’ name. Amen. In response, let’s turn and sing hymn number 469, and let’s stand as we sing hymn 469.

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  • Looking to the Reward

    Looking to the Reward

    About this sermon

    By faith Moses’ parents hid him, not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith Moses refused the title son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing to suffer mistreatment with God’s people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin, because he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt and looked to the reward. Faith enables believers to face fear, counts reproach for Christ as riches, and realigns their loyalties, as Rahab did when she welcomed the spies and joined herself to Israel.

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Well, let’s turn now in the scriptures to look at Hebrews chapter 11. We’ll be reading verses 23 through 31. This is the book of Hebrews chapter 11, verses 23 through 31 this morning. Please give your attention to the reading of God’s Word. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the fleeting, greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

    By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch him, touch them. By faith, the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith, Rahab, the prostitute, did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. Amen. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, Lord God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you who have inspired this word, we ask that you would come and you would open our hearts, open our ears, that we might have ears that hear, that you might turn and heal us. We might not be those that have ears but do not hear, but we would have hearts that are changed, that are open and receptive to the power of your word.

    We ask that you would be present by your spirit in the preaching and hearing. For Jesus’ sake, we pray this. Amen. You may be seated. What is your reward? I’ve been a bit of a neuroscience nerd for a few years now and partly trying to understand some of my own struggles with high school and college, which I later discovered would be some of the traits matching ADHD, but partly because I’m just fascinated with how things work including our brains. One of the things that has become clear is that there are important connections between our physical bodies and our brains, especially in terms of exercise, which is why I’ve taken up running myself, but exercise by nature is challenging. It’s often hard to keep people motivated to do it. In fact, they did a study a number of years ago on how to help keep people motivated to keep up their exercise goals and they advised different groups of people to focus on different things while they exercised.

    The thing that worked the best to keep people consistent over the long run with their own plans was they’re focusing on their goal, their long-term benefits. Trying to just enjoy the moment, planning an indulgent cheat meal after you were done or focusing on the negative aspects, pounds you were trying to lose or things like that ended up causing each of the participant groups to give up sooner than the group that focused on their final positive reward. And it’s similar with a life of faith. The only way to make it to the end is to focus on the reward. We’ve seen in our study of Hebrews, the language of reward show up recently in chapter 10 and 11. In chapter 10, if we look back at verse 35, Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

    Then also in verse 6 of Hebrews 11, 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. Up to this point in the examples of Hebrews 11, we’ve mostly seen how faith empowers personal acts of piety and sacrifice. Abel and Enoch worshipped God and walked with God by faith. Abraham sacrificed comfort and security to become a nomad in the promised land. But in our passage that we’re looking at this morning, we see the importance of faith when there are hostile forces involved. While Abel was killed for his faithful sacrifice, he probably wasn’t conscious of the risk of his obedience at the time. In our passage this morning, we encounter numerous instances in which faithful obedience involved great risk and could only be followed through by faith.

    What does it mean to live by faith? So in Hebrews 11, the great hall of faith, we see ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Not because of their strength, but because their eyes were fixed on something greater, the reward. This isn’t a fleeting prize like a lottery ticket or a promotion at work. The eternal inheritance promised by God, his presence, his glory, and the unshakable kingdom that outlasts every earthly empire. Today as we unpack Hebrews 11, 23 through 31, we’ll explore how faith reshapes our reality when we look to that reward. We’ll see it through three lenses. Number one, faith makes facing fear feasible. Number two, faith turns reproaches into riches. And number three, faith makes realignment rewarding. These three elements, which are found woven all throughout our passage, of course they aren’t abstract ideas. They’re battle tested truths from Moses to Rahab calling us to the same kind of bold reward focused living.

    So number one, faith makes facing fear feasible. We see this concept present in the first verse of our passage, verse 23. By faith, Moses when he was born was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. Some of you might read this verse like I did and ask, what does Moses being beautiful have to do with faith? That’s a good question and I’m not sure what the answer would be. But I don’t think that’s what the author of Hebrews is focused on here. The word for beautiful is just the Greek word for aesthetic. But really it’s just a quote from Exodus chapter two, verse two. The woman conceived in Boris’ son and when she saw that he was a fine or a beautiful child, in the Greek it’s the same word, she hid him for three months.

    I don’t think the author of Hebrews is intending for us to find deep meaning in the fine features of Moses. Instead I think our focus ought to be on the next phrase, they were not afraid of the king’s edict. Moses’ parents refused to comply with Pharaoh’s new order that all the baby boys be killed. It’s quite likely the first readers of this letter to the Hebrews were facing hostile authorities in their own context. Moses’ parents, in their context, they had already had at least two children. We know they had Aaron and Miriam. They could have just said, two is enough, we’ll comply with the king’s horrible edict and kill our third child. But despite the danger, of course, they knew this would be wrong and of course I’m sure they loved Moses. So they took this quiet stand, refusing to comply with the command to kill their child.

    They had no idea who Moses would grow up to be and what he would do, but they faced their fear of the king through faith, obeying God. Because of their faith, they took a stand against the king of Egypt. By faith, Moses was hidden for three months because his parents were not afraid of the king’s edict. But Moses’ parents aren’t the only ones facing fears in our passage. In verse 27, Moses faced down his fear of Pharaoh as an adult. By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. This verse poses a couple of challenges at first glance. Moses is not fearing Pharaoh. When we just read earlier in the service, Exodus 2, 14 and 15, then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known.

    When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. But I think we can resolve this by considering that the author of Hebrews is doing what he already did with Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac earlier in chapter 11, when he spoke of their overarching faith, which ultimately characterized their lives and actions. Moses did experience initial fear. He did leave Egypt, but ultimately, instead of succumbing to fear, he faced it by faith. In fact, we know he returned to deliver his people. The second challenge comes in the next phrase of this verse, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. The word endured seems a little out of place. What is Moses enduring, the wilderness? The fact is the translation is a little bit challenging here.

    The author of Hebrews writes very compactly, requires the translator to put in a little bit of work to figure out how the words are relating. The ESV translates the word endured as something Moses is doing because of what he’s seeing. Now endured is the main verb in that clause, but it’s not meant to stand alone. In fact, it might be better translated as persisted in this case. One reason for the slightly confusing grammar is that you can’t actually see someone who is invisible by definition. So the writer of Hebrews sticks in the word as to say that it is as though Moses saw him who was invisible. If we look down at verse 29, we see a similar use of as. By faith, the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land. A more literal translation would say as if or as though it was dry land.

    And so enduring or persisting that Moses did was persisting in seeing the invisible one. The best Greek lexicon paraphrases the end of verse 27 as Moses kept the one who is invisible continually before his eyes in faith as it were. Moses was unafraid because he persistently fixed his eyes upon God. That is what he persisted in, looking upon the face of God. And of course, God speaks in the account in Exodus of how Moses uniquely saw the face of God and God spoke to him face to face. Now the point in this verse is that the writer of Hebrews is saying Moses left Egypt and conquered his fear by persistently seeing God even though he was invisible. Of course, how do you see something that is invisible? Well, you have to use a different faculty than your eyes.

    Eyes can only see things that are visible. If you want to see someone who is invisible, you need faith. Remember verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 11. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen or the proof or the reality of things not seen. And that’s precisely what Moses did. He used his faith to see God. The examples of faith facilitating the facing of fear continue throughout our passage. Verse 28, Moses led all the Israelites to face down fear by sacrificing the Passover lamb smearing its blood on their houses. Then verse 29, when facing a horde of angry Egyptians, Moses led the Israelites to walk through the heart of the sea, which promptly closed back over their enemies. And in verse 30, they march around a heavily fortified city waiting for God to give them victory.

    The writer of Hebrews knows the checkered reality of Israel’s faith throughout this time. That was chapter 3 and 4 of Hebrews. His focus in our passage is on the factor of faith in facing fear. And it does this by making the invisible more real than the visible. Jesus told his disciples to consider reordering their fear in Matthew chapter 10 verse 28. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. There is a right and proper fear of the Lord. But when the Bible talks about fearing the Lord, it means more than just being scared of God more than anyone else. It’s a way of treating God as more real, more holy, more important than anything else. Moses’ parents feared Pharaoh a little, but they feared God more.

    The same with Moses, Israel, and the other examples. You and I, of course, must adopt a similar mindset. Facing fear with faith means seeing the invisible as more real than the visible. Having an eternal perspective will allow you to face fearful situations because it will put them into perspective. You must look to the reward. Now another perspective shifting thing that we see faith doing in our passage is number 2, faith turns reproaches into riches. Look at verses 24 through 26. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. Therefore he was looking to the reward. Although Moses’ parents saved him from immediate death in the Nile, his mother did eventually sort of obey Pharaoh by putting Moses in the river.

    Of course she put him in a basket, but I’m not sure that basket would have stood much chance against crocodiles and hippopotamus. However, she put him in the basket and perhaps according to her plan, Pharaoh’s daughter discovered the nautical infant. Moses was preserved from death, but he was raised from childhood in the household of Pharaoh. This was not the same Pharaoh that had been friendly to Joseph and the Israelites. This Pharaoh was utterly opposed to Israel and to their God. We don’t know how much contact with the Israelites or his birth family Moses had while he was growing up. Once he went to the palace, we don’t know if he ever came back. Yet despite this, Moses somehow came to understand that his own identity was not originally Egyptian and rather than embracing his life of luxury and prestige, he chose poverty and reproach as an Israelite.

    Presumably the author of Hebrews is talking about the incident that we read earlier from Exodus chapter 2 verses 11 and 12. As we read earlier, one day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that and seen no one. He struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. This act put Moses at odds with the Egyptians, but it didn’t immediately endear him to the Israelites either, requiring him to flee Egypt entirely. But the author of Hebrews is looking at Moses’ act in a larger context, its greater significance and implications. The author of Hebrews is writing his letter to Christians who are facing some of their own challenges and hostilities for their faith.

    They were being insulted, called names, possibly threatened for their identity as Christians. So the author of Hebrews pauses in his story on Moses to make sure that his readers get the point. Moses had a similar choice before him that they also might face, except Moses’ choice was perhaps more stark. Moses was royalty in Egypt, but as an Israelite he would be a slave. He had the right of Egyptian sonship by adoption, one of the most prominent empires in the world at the time, yet he gave that up for an Israelite slave identity. As the author of Hebrews makes this point, the parallels are too strong between this Moses, the redeemer of God’s people, and the one whom Moses pointed to, to not mention him. Paul’s letter to the Philippians was likely in the mind of the author of Hebrews as he wrote the passage in Hebrews 11.

    Paul writes in Philippians, a well-known passage, chapter 2, verses 5 through 11, Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee shall 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. Christ traded royal treatment for a season of servanthood for the sake of our salvation.

    Moses made a calculation when he gave up Egyptian riches and took on Israelite poverty. On the surface it looked like a terrible deal. Moses was never welcomed back into Egypt, and he never even made it into the promised land. He left jaw-dropping wealth to wander in the wilderness for eighty years with the people that often hated him and tried to kill him multiple times. But Moses was looking far beyond his brief one hundred and twenty year lifespan. He was looking at eternity. With an eternal perspective, suddenly everything shifted for him. Only decades of Egyptian wealth, comfort, and power looked instead like fleeting pleasures of sin. What good is a few decades of sinful pleasure that ends in never-ending punishment, or what’s a few decades of slavery and reproach and treasures in heaven forever? That’s what Moses thought.

    I’d rather spend eternity as one of God’s people, even if that means spending my whole life here as a slave or just wandering in the wilderness. What’s eighty years in the wilderness when I get eternity with God? Verse twenty-six, he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. Moses wasn’t making a foolish calculation, he was making the calculation of faith. Faith doesn’t ask, how can I be miserable? That’s what the world, Satan and your sinful flesh, tell you faith is all about. They do your best to convince you that faith is foolish, obeying God is miserable, while sin is satisfying, fulfilling. Sin asks, how can I be happy right now? Faith asks, how can I truly be happy forever? What truly makes the most sense in the grand scheme of eternity?

    And when you look at it that way, there’s no question. But that’s our problem, even as believers. We get sidetracked, we get distracted, we start to lose sight of the reward. But that’s why the letter to Hebrews was written and preserved for us to read. It’s why Jesus said in Luke six, twenty-two to twenty-three, blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For so their fathers did to the prophets. Not all believers will have the exact choice that Moses faced. But all believers will suffer in one way or another. The apostle Paul says it’s part of their union with Christ, which is what the author of Hebrews is picking up on, the reproaches of Christ.

    Paul puts it this way in Philippians again, chapter three, eight through eleven. Indeed, I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. This is all so that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may obtain, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Christ’s crown came after his cross, and he has ordained that the same is true of those who are his by faith.

    The suffering of believers is not the basis or means of their salvation. Christ’s suffering for our sins is what brings us peace with God, cleansing from sin and a new life, but if we’re truly connected with Christ, we will experience collateral damage from the world’s hatred of Christ. But instead of being something to be discouraged by, we are to see it by faith as a sign that we are connected to Christ, which is a reason to be very happy. For if we suffer with him, we shall also be rewarded with him, just as Moses was. The third aspect of faith in our passage is number three, that faith makes realignment rewarding. In many ways much of what was said about Moses would fit under this third heading as well. Moses made a conscious choice to realign himself with God’s people, rather than the Egyptians that he was raised with.

    But we also see this idea in the stories in verses 30 and 31, verse 30, by faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. When Joshua was on his way to Jericho, he encountered an imposing warrior, we find the account in Joshua chapter 5, Joshua chapter 5, verses 13 and 14. When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold a man was standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and he said to him, are you for us or for our adversaries? And the man said, no, I am the commander of the army of the Lord, now I have come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said, what does my Lord say to his servant?

    Joshua had an understandable inquiry of the heavenly warrior, whose side are you on? But he had overlooked a more fundamental question, whose side is Joshua and Israel on? The commander of the Lord’s army reoriented Joshua and asked if Israel was on God’s side. Joshua wisely immediately renounced allegiance to himself and changed his allegiance to God alone. Joshua’s renouncing of allegiance to himself was rewarded by sharing in God’s victory over Jericho. It wasn’t Israel or even Joshua’s powerful stomping around Jericho that brought the walls down. It was the Lord’s army in response to Israel’s faith, which was demonstrated by their marching obediently around. And we see another instance of realignment being rewarded in verse 31. By faith Rahab, the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.

    The story referred to here is found in Joshua chapter 2, with the conclusion coming in Joshua 6 when Jericho fell. Joshua sent spies into Canaan to understand what he was up against, since it had been 40 years since he and Caleb had spied out the land under Moses. One of the major cities the spies came to first was Jericho. By this point, the word had apparently gotten around Canaan. The nation of Israel was coming to conquer. Looking for a place to stay, the spies found a prostitute offering lodging. We don’t know if they were originally there for other reasons besides a place to stay, but it turned out to be very providential, because it wasn’t long until someone who saw the spies enter Jericho realized who they were, and what it was they were doing, and reported it to the king.

    He ordered a furious search to be made immediately, starting with Rahab’s house where they were last seen. But instead of turning the Israelites over to the authorities, Rahab bravely hid the man on the roof, and claimed that they had already left the city. When she got rid of the authorities, she told the spies that the reason she had hid them was because she wanted to renounce her own allegiance to Canaan. She asked the spies to remember that, remember her and her family when they came back to conquer Jericho. Joshua chapter 2, verse 8 and 9. Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the earth melt away before you.

    Verse 11, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt kindly with you, you will also deal kindly with me and my father’s house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death. Rahab was not merely trying to extract a favor from the Israelites. She made clear that because of her faith in God, she had switched her allegiance to the God of Israel. Her fraternizing with the enemies of Jericho was the fruit of her faith in God who was coming to conquer Canaan. Like Joshua, Rahab desired to be on the Lord’s side, and like many others to come, Rahab’s faith saved her from perishing.

    Rahab’s act of hospitality was treason. It put her life in jeopardy. But the writer of Hebrews may have been particularly interested in it for that reason. In the previous chapter, we saw the author command his readers for similar actions. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 34. He commands his readers, for you had compassion on those in prison. You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. And later in chapter 13, we will find another exhortation to practice hospitality. Chapter 13, verse 2. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Many of the first readers of this letter to the Hebrews might have been tempted to pull back from offering dangerous hospitality. But the author wants to remind them to press in.

    You’re in good company, and it won’t go unrewarded. Of course, Rahab has always been a controversial figure in biblical history. Not only was she a Gentile outside of the Israelite community, but as a prostitute, her profession was not reputable either. She had nothing to command herself before God, and every reason to be rejected. Yet, she came in repentance and in faith. In faith, she could see that there was no going against God. But instead of doubling down like the rest of the people of Jericho, even the rest of the land of Canaan, she laid down her arms, surrendered, and sought to be realigned with God’s people. That’s what repentance is. It’s a realignment from being an ally of sin, trying to be God of our own lives, and asking God instead to make us one of his people.

    What’s amazing is that Rahab wasn’t just made one of God’s people. She was woven into the Israelite community and became an ancestor to King David, and even to Jesus himself. All throughout our passage this morning, we’ve seen how looking to the reward by the faculty of faith transforms our view of reality. We’ve talked a lot about people looking to the reward, but in case the reward is still a little fuzzy in your minds, here’s how God sums it up in the words of the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 62, verses 11 and 12. Behold, the Lord of the world has proclaimed to the end of the earth, say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your salvation comes. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him, and they shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, and you shall be called sought out, a city not forsaken.

    The reward is being with God as one of his people. When you belong to God, you can face fear, and when reproaches come, they indicate that you belong to Christ by faith, and they become riches. And when you lay down your arms and realign with God, you find the reward of salvation, being one of his people. Amen. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, thank you, you are a God who rewards those who seek you. You reward those who lay down their arms and come in repentance and faith, believing that you will reward with making us your own. Lord, we ask that you would give us repentance. We might realign with you. We might become enemies of sin and friends and sons and daughters and people of God. We pray this in Jesus’ name.

    Amen. Let’s conclude by singing hymn 480. Let’s stand as we sing and turn to number 480.

    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.

  • Death-Defying Faith

    Death-Defying Faith

    About this sermon

    Hebrews 11 recounts faith facing death. Abraham offered up Isaac, reasoning that God could raise him from the dead, and figuratively he received him back, a picture of Christ, whom God delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Isaac and Jacob blessed their sons concerning things to come. Joseph, though he ruled Egypt and had every reason to call it home, gave directions concerning his bones, so that Israel would carry them to Canaan at the exodus. All of them looked beyond death to God’s promises.

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    Sermon transcript

    If you would, take your Bibles and turn this evening to our text, which will be from Hebrews chapter 11. This evening we’re looking at verses 17 through 22 of Hebrews chapter 11. Please give your attention to the reading of God’s word. By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones. Amen. You may be seated. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we come to you this evening. We come because in and of ourselves we do not have the eyes to see, the hearts to believe and understand, the ears to hear what you have for us in this life-giving word.

    So we ask for your spirit, that you would open up our hearts to hear and receive it. You would open up the mouth of the preacher to give people, your people, food from your word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. What will come next? My wife’s grandmother, Ruby Cleary, made extensive preparations for life to continue after she was gone. Some people never think beyond their own death, but not her. She thought far beyond her own death, making preparations for her children and her grandchildren. Her husband passed on a decade before her, and her oldest son, Kevin, was mentally disabled. So she made him a ward of the state and set up a trust fund to care for him for the rest of his life. But more than that, she got together with a group of moms that she knew who had similarly challenged children and planned the construction of a whole group home for them all to live in.

    They had only barely laid the foundation when she passed away, but the plans were already set and in place. And it became a place for Kevin to be cared for when she passed away. Her foresight far beyond her own death enabled her to prepare for her son to be cared for in a beautiful home, surrounded by his friends. She also made plans for her grandchildren, setting up college funds for each of them from which my wife benefited. She was not an especially wealthy woman, but she could see far beyond her own life to her children and grandchildren and made preparations for those that came after her. Not everything worked out the way she had planned, but because of her ability to see beyond her own life, her children and her grandchildren, she set them up with a legacy.

    Tonight, under the banner of death-defying faith, we return to Hebrews 11 to see how an unshakable confidence in the unseen and a rock-solid conviction that God rewards those who seek him emboldened the patriarchs to live and die with eternity in view. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph did not merely endure the trials in their life, but they triumphed over them, looking past the grave to the God who keeps every promise. We will trace this thread in three movements this evening. Number one, Abraham’s parable of resurrection, how faith turned a father’s knife into a forecast of Easter morning. Number two, Isaac and Jacob’s benedictions, how dying men spoke living words that still echo in the covenant. And number three, Joseph’s skeletal conviction, how a coffin in Egypt became a compass pointing to Canaan. And each scene confronts us with the same question.

    Will we trust God when the path of obedience leads straight through the valley of the shadow of death? Let’s fix our eyes on these clouds of witnesses and pray that their death-defying faith becomes ours. Number one, Abraham’s parable of resurrection. Verse 17, By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son. In our passage, we find the author of Hebrews circling back around to highlight another aspect of Abraham’s life of faith. The account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is one of the most famous Old Testament stories. I think the raw emotion of being commanded by God to sacrifice one of your own children, especially your only son, probably is what makes it poignant even to those outside of Christianity.

    It’s hard to imagine what it would take to believe God enough to obey him to the point of sacrificing your only son. But in this case, for Abraham, it was even harder. Isaac wasn’t just the only son born to Sarah and him, but he was also the designated instrument of God’s promise of uncountable descendants. Isaac had been produced by the power of God, the power of God’s promise, from a situation in which ordinary conception was no longer possible. And it was in Isaac that God’s promise of descendants was bound up. Abraham had already tried to help God out in two other instances. First, he had suggested in Genesis 15 that his servant, Eliezer of Damascus, be his heir. But God refused in Genesis 15, reiterating his promise to Abraham of children from Abraham himself. Then Abraham had a child with Hagar, Sarah’s servant, and suggested in Genesis 17, verse 18, that Ishmael be the bearer of God’s promise.

    But again, God refused Abraham’s offer, insisting that the promised child would come miraculously from Abraham and Sarah themselves. Finally, Isaac arrives to the astonishment and joy of Abraham and Sarah. And then comes the baffling command concerning Isaac. Sacrifice your only son, your pride and joy, the fulfillment and bearer of the promises of God. This was a test of Abraham’s faith. Verse 17 states it plainly. I think you and I all sooner or later face Mount Moriah moments ourselves. Mount Moriah, of course, being the mountain that Abraham went up to sacrifice Isaac. Faith does not grow in a vacuum. Faith grows through exercise, through trial, and through testing. Romans chapter 4 reflects on the story of Abraham and his faith. In this instance as well, Romans chapter 4, verses 18 through 21, reflects on the story of Abraham leading up to the birth of Isaac.

    It says, In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations. As he had been told, so shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the bareness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Abraham’s faith was tested at each stage of his life. Go out somewhere you don’t know. Trust me to give you a son. Now sacrifice him. A trial, a testing of faith, involves an incongruity between what can be seen with your eyes and what is promised.

    When the promise and the sight match up, there’s no need for faith. But faith bridges that gap between what things look like now and what has been promised. Abraham had been practicing this all along, up to this point, with God giving him promises which didn’t match up to the way things looked in the present. God didn’t give Abraham these trials just to mess with him. They were carefully crafted to cultivate Abraham’s faith. The same is true, of course, for you and I. God uses everything, even Satan, to allow doubts to creep up, assail us. We see that in the story of Job. But while Satan’s purpose is to make you lose your faith, give up, hate God and reject him, God’s purpose is never that you lose your faith, but that it grows. Sometimes it can feel like you’re barely hanging on by fingernails of faith, about to slip into despair.

    And you can wonder, is God making my life hard just for fun, or so that I’ll give up? His commands seem impossible to square with his intention for my greatest good and ultimate satisfaction. Or life circumstances seem to be causing me to question his wisdom, purposes, power, or goodness. Martha and Mary were starting to ask that question of Jesus when he showed up at the tomb of Lazarus. Abraham had probably asked that question of God’s dealing with him as he wandered through Canaan, as a stranger, having left houses, land, stability, with a perpetual promise of a son, which became less likely year after year. But each time the Lord came through and fulfilled his promise. And this is actually one of the top reasons that we ought to be in frequent prayer. When you’re bringing things to the Lord in prayer, you’ll notice when he answers those prayers.

    And this will strengthen your faith. Faith is not strengthened by assuring yourself that you’ve got this. There is value in gaining maturity so that you’re not overwhelmed, thinking you can’t handle anything. But faith is not about self-assurance. It’s about confidence in God. God confidence. And it comes from seeking God’s help, obeying him, and seeing him come through. Then we come to Abraham’s most challenging trial of faith of all, a command to sacrifice his own son. Yet as we see in our passage, Abraham’s faith held up. Verses 17 and 18. In Genesis chapter 22, verse 3, we read that Abraham rose early in the morning to obey the Lord. Genesis 22 doesn’t tell us much about what Abraham was thinking. But Hebrews 11, 19 tells us he made the logical deduction that was only possible from faith.

    He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead. Abraham believed that Isaac was the fulfillment of God’s promise, the one through whom his descendants must be named. And since he was called to kill him, suddenly the most unusual occurrence of resurrection became the most likely outcome in Abraham’s mind. Abraham got to the point where he was expecting God to do something he had never seen or probably even heard of happening. Resurrection. Abraham had stopped doubting God’s means to achieve his purpose and promise. And despite having no precedent for resurrection, he was so confident that Isaac would rise from the dead that he was able to attempt to go through with the slaughter of his own son. Abraham was looking beyond Isaac’s death. He was believing that nothing, not even death, could stop God’s promise from coming true.

    He had stopped trying to help God out and had learned to finally and fully trust God to fulfill his promises. Whenever an outcome is beyond our sight or ability, we’re tempted to doubt. But when the path of obedience is clear, faith is what enables faithful obedience. Verse 19 says that even though God intervened before death, Isaac’s rescue was a figurative resurrection. Verse 19, he considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. Now this phrase, figuratively speaking, is literally in the Greek the word for parable. Now the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22 has long been seen as pointing to the substitutionary sacrifice of the beloved son of God on the cross. The ram that was caught in the thicket, which saved Abraham’s beloved son through substitution, was pointing to the one and only son whom the father sent to die for sins so that whoever believes on him would not perish but have eternal life.

    And God commends Abraham’s faith in Genesis 22, verse 12. Now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. And Romans chapter 4, verses 22 through 25, comments further on the relationship of faith to God’s counting Abraham as righteous. Romans chapter 4, verse 22. It is not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. And it will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus Christ our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. The resurrection of Christ seals the justification of believers, so that those who put their trust in Christ Jesus are counted as having obeyed God perfectly and never sinned. Isaac’s figurative resurrection gave life to Abraham’s physical descendants. Isaac’s physical descendant Christ’s resurrection gave spiritual life to Abraham’s spiritual descendants who share the faith of Abraham.

    Isaac’s figurative resurrection gave life to Abraham’s physical descendants, but Isaac’s physical descendant Christ’s resurrection gave spiritual life to Abraham’s spiritual descendants who share the faith of Abraham. But as the author of Hebrews continues to think about faith, he turns to the faith of Abraham’s son and grandson displayed in their deathbed benedictions, which brings us to number two, Isaac and Jacob’s benedictions. Verses 20 through 21, by faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. The theme that we have seen running through these verses has been that of faith that can see a reality beyond death. Abraham saw the life of Isaac beyond Isaac’s death. Abraham didn’t know how it would happen, but he knew that somehow Isaac would be alive beyond this call to sacrifice him.

    Death was not the end in Abraham’s mind because of his faith. And we see that same kind of death-defying faith present in the lives of Isaac and Jacob. Isaac and Jacob, those separate individuals, serve similar points in our passage, giving a blessing by faith to those that would come after them. Verse 20, by faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. Those of us who know the story from Genesis know that Isaac’s conduct and motives are not without fault, not to mention the reprehensible deception by Jacob and his mother. But once again, the author of Hebrews is not intending to tell the whole story here. His point is not the well-known flaws. His point is the faith that empowers and emboldens spiritual actions, supernatural actions. The adults and children who attended the Presbyterial Ohio Youth Camp in June will recall that the whole theme of the camp that week was on benedictions.

    We don’t always think that much about benedictions at the end of worship services, but I think we ought to. Now our culture, more broadly, considers prayers, even religion in general, as offensive at worst, but cute and meaningless at best. And if we’re not careful in the church, we can sometimes be inclined to view our religious practices in worship as merely symbolic. Sometimes it might come from a desire to distance ourselves from overly mystical views and practices within other branches of Christianity, which is understandable, but it doesn’t mean it’s correct. A benediction is a powerful word of blessing that is half prayer, half declaration, rightly issued by a minister of God on behalf of God. When God commanded Aaron to bless the people of Israel in his name, the benediction of Numbers chapter 6, he concludes in verse 27, So they shall put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.

    Honestly, one of the top reasons I come to worship is to hear the benediction. To receive that blessing from God, which I so desperately need to keep living a life of faith. But in Hebrews chapter 11, verses 20 and 21, we’re reminded of the factor of faith in pronouncing benedictions. If you recall the story of Isaac blessing Jacob and Esau, which is found in Genesis chapter 27, Isaac didn’t consider his words mere well wishes for his children. Once he had first pronounced that blessing upon Jacob, he could not take it back. And he could not offer Esau an identical or a rival blessing, despite Esau’s weeping. Esau’s blessing was a lesser blessing that harmonized with Jacob’s preeminent blessing, but did not negate it or usurp it in any way. This corresponded, of course, to the word that God had spoken to Isaac and Rebekah before Jacob and Esau were born, namely, the older will serve the younger.

    The author of Hebrews is highlighting the role that faith played in this act. Isaac had confidence that realities which he could not currently see and which were still in the future would indeed come to pass by the power of God in response to his blessing. Faith didn’t make the blessings efficacious. Faith enabled Isaac to believe that the blessing he was pronouncing was true, that it would truly come to pass. And we see something similar mentioned with Jacob in regard to blessing his grandsons. In verse 21, by faith Jacob when dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. Jacob gives an unconventional blessing of preeminence to the younger of Joseph’s two sons Ephraim over his brother Manasseh. The writer of Hebrews is zeroing in on the faith of Isaac and Jacob in pronouncing the blessings of God upon their descendants from their deathbeds.

    But I think he’s looking at more than the mere fact that they were blessing their descendants. I think he’s also considering the content of those blessings that Jacob and Isaac gave. We find Isaac’s blessing in Genesis 27, verses 27 through 29. Genesis 27, 27. So he came near and kissed him and Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, See the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you.

    Isaac’s blessing echoes and reiterates the promise that God had made to Abraham, especially that last phrase, cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. In his act of blessing Jacob, Isaac by faith is appropriating the promise of God to his father Abraham, owning that promise for himself and passing it on to his son Jacob in faith. He’s stating that he doesn’t think God’s promise ends with his own life. Rather he believes it is only beginning. And then if we turn ahead to Genesis chapter 48 verses 15 and 16, we see Jacob grounding his blessing in God’s promise to Abraham as well. Genesis chapter 48 verses 15 and 16. And he blessed Joseph and said, The God before whom my father Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys, and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.

    Further down in verse 21, Then Israel said to Joseph, Behold I am about to die, but God will be with you, and will bring you again to the land of your fathers. Jacob’s blessing of his grandsons and sons was rooted in his absolute confidence that God would fulfill his promises. His blessing was not merely wishing his sons and grandsons well, but it was a faith-filled pronouncement that God’s promises would come to pass. There was no doubt in Isaac or Jacob that God’s promises, though largely unfulfilled and still in the future at their death, were as good as done. And this leads us right into our consideration finally of Joseph himself in verse 22 of our passage. So number three, Joseph’s skeletal conviction. Verse 22, By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.

    We move naturally from Jacob’s blessing Joseph’s sons to Joseph himself. The account is found in Genesis chapter 50 verses 24 through 26. Genesis 50 verse 24, And Joseph said to his brothers, I am about to die, but God will visit you, and will bring you up out of this land, to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here. So Joseph died being 110 years old. They embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. We see Joseph clearly sharing the same faith of his ancestors, a clear confidence in God’s determination to fulfill his promise. Joseph is assuming the certainty of God’s promise. God will surely visit you, and making a request based on that confidence.

    But there’s something more going on in Joseph’s final request than merely confidence in God’s ability and willingness to fulfill his promise to give Canaan to the Israelites. Joseph also joins Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in his insistence on being buried in Canaan. This is important because there was a very real sense in which Joseph inherited the position of the firstborn after Reuben had forfeited it. Since it is Joseph who receives a double portion among the Israelite tribes by having his two sons each become tribes, giving Joseph a double portion of the tribes. As far as we know, all the rest of Joseph’s brothers were buried in Egypt and never moved. But for Joseph, it was extremely important that he be buried in Canaan. This was despite the fact that Joseph had more reasons than any of them to love Egypt and call it his ultimate home.

    He was a ruler of all Egypt, second only to Pharaoh, with potential for integration into the Egyptian religion since he had married the daughter of a prominent Egyptian priest. Joseph was living a great life in Egypt, and to top it all off, his estranged family had all come down to live in Egypt with him. There was every reason for Joseph to call Egypt home, and almost no reasons for him to long for Canaan. This is why his request came by faith. By faith, Joseph could see beyond all that comfort and security that he was enjoying in the moment, in the present life, and he wanted something more, something better than this world could ever give. He knew Egypt was not his ultimate home, and he knew it was not Israel’s ultimate home. Even in death, Joseph’s bones were left waiting, year after year, decade after decade, until the day when Israel finally left Egypt, led by Moses.

    Exodus 13, 19 says, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here. But of course, Israel didn’t immediately go into the promised land, but wandered for 40 years in the desert because of their disobedience. And all that time they kept the bones of Joseph. So that finally we read in Joshua 24, verse 32, as they are settling in the land of Canaan, as for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.

    Joseph wasn’t being superstitious about his burial place. God can raise the dead from anywhere. He was making clear his faith in God’s promise and his ultimate allegiance to God’s promised land. He clearly expected to die outside of the promised land, but his faith looked beyond his own death to God’s promised fulfillment in Canaan. All of these examples that we’ve looked at this evening have to do with a faith that looks beyond death. One of the things we confessed in the Nicene Creed earlier in our service is, I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Failure to believe in the resurrection, the hope of life after death, is not optional. Christians are those whose lives are marked by a quiet confidence and clear preference for the promised land that is to come.

    Death comes to us all. But Christians know for dead certain that this earth is not our home, and one day we will be with the Lord. In Abraham’s case, he was called to believe in life after death as he put his own son obediently on the altar, knowing that somehow or another, Isaac would have to be resurrected since God’s promise was true. Isaac and Jacob looked beyond their own deaths with confidence that God’s promises would come true to their descendants. And Joseph demonstrates a consistent faith throughout his life, whether things were miserable or comfortable. He started out sold as a slave by his brothers, and just when things were starting to look up, he became falsely accused and was thrown in prison for years. But in many ways, the real test for Joseph came when he became ruler of Egypt and had everything that this life could offer him.

    The temptation was that much greater to make Egypt his home without any thought for the promised land. The battle to hold onto faith is often much harder when sight seems to be offering so many things, everything you could want. But despite all this, Joseph never lost sight of the fact that Egypt was not his home, and that one day God would bring all of his people out. And when he did, Joseph wanted to be sure that he was part of that number. Joseph kept his death-defying faith all the way to the end and never lost sight of his true home. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word that gives us windows, that shows us the faith of your saints who believed in you, believed that you would reward, believed that death was not the end, and that you had a better city prepared for them.

    We thank you that you give us that same spirit, to give us the same faith that we too might believe. We ask that you would fix our eyes upon the author and founder of our faith, Jesus Christ, and give us the faith of these saints, for we pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen. As we close, let’s continue our worship by singing hymn 471, The Sands of Time are Sinking. Let’s stand as we sing, hymn 471.  

    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.

  • Noah’s Constructive Faith

    Noah’s Constructive Faith

    About this sermon

    “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household.” Faith acts: Noah built for years on the strength of God’s word alone. Faith condemns the world: his obedience removed every excuse from his unbelieving generation, showing that the problem lay in their hardness of heart, not in God. And faith inherits righteousness: Noah became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith, the same inheritance Hebrews promises to all who trust Christ.

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Let’s turn now to the reading of God’s word. If you would please stand for the reading. This evening we’re looking at a verse from the book of Hebrews chapter eleven resuming our series in the book of Hebrews and we’re just looking at verse seven this evening. Give your attention to God’s word, please. Hebrews 11 verse seven, By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Let’s pray. Father in heaven we thank you for your word. We thank you for the Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of this word so many years ago and the preservation of it throughout the centuries so that we might have it in our hands today.

    But Lord we know that with our sinful hearts that alone is not enough to give us life. We need your spirit to come and give light to our hearts that we might hear and believe that we might find and see and experience and taste and receive the life that is within these words. So we ask that you would come and do that this evening for your glory and our good. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen. You may be seated. There’s a popular church in North Carolina near where we lived for many years that would sponsor a billboard on the interstate not far from our house. And for a long time, many months if not a year, it displayed the simple word faith with a line under and was the word fear. Faith over fear.

    The meaning was to say that they were holding on to faith over fear. In this instance faith was pitted against fear. I believe that this display started during the tumultuous time of the COVID pandemic trying to encourage people to hold on to faith against fear. And I understand what they were trying to say in this billboard and there’s a very real sense in which faith is the opposite. It is in opposition to fear. Jesus repeatedly rebuked his disciples for having fear rather than faith. He viewed their fear to be evidence as a lack of their faith. And many in the broader Christian world are used to this pitting of fear against faith. But there is another sense in which true fear, true faith involves a sense of fear. And that is what is in view in our passage this evening.

    In this instance Noah’s fear was not in opposition to his faith but it was actually evidence of his faith. Noah is an example of the way that fear and faith go rightly together. When God issues threats of judgment the response of faith is to rightly fear because it’s true. If God’s threat is really going to come to pass, really going to take place then a believing response is to be afraid. Disbelief would simply laugh it off but faith fears. So this evening we’ve come to the story of Noah as another example set forth by the author of Hebrews as an exemplar of certain aspects of faith. Noah’s example of faith brings out three aspects of faith which we’ll look at tonight. Number one, faith fearfully acts. Number two, faith condemns the world. And number three, faith inherits righteousness.

    Number one, faith fearfully acts. Faith hears God’s warning, it believes that warning, and it heeds that warning. It acts in response to that belief. Callie and I just came back from Yamamoto, Japan which is a little seaside town which is devastated in 2011 by the enormous tsunami. Thousands of people up and down the coast lost their lives and many of them from Yamamoto. Part of what made the tsunami so deadly was that many people didn’t believe the warnings. The earthquake happened, alarms went off alerting people of the possibility of a tsunami. Now there were places in which the alarms didn’t go off and that caused other problems. But there were many places where the alarms did go off and the people still didn’t heed the warning. We heard the story of a missionary who was living there very close to the coast with his wife and child very close to the shore and the husband at that time was away north in Sendai helping Marie Uemoto on the day of the earthquake and the tsunami.

    But he had sternly warned his wife that whenever an earthquake hit she must without hesitation seek high ground since their house was so close to the ocean. So when the earthquake hit she immediately packed up, got in her car with the baby to head for high ground. At that point there was no tsunami in sight but she was obeying her husband’s directions. She tried to persuade her neighbors to come and get in the car with her but they refused thinking there was nothing to worry about. Finally she had to leave without them. Within an hour their house was completely swept away and the neighbors who had stayed behind perished. There were no working cell phones and so the husband returned to the site looking for his wife. He could only find the barest traces of their house’s foundation but no sign of his wife.

    It ended up being a couple of days before he was finally able to locate her as he frantically searched shelter after shelter. In fact he had begun to grieve her death when he found her after all. But the wife was saved because she had believed her husband’s warning about the earthquakes and had obeyed his instructions to flee regardless of what it looked like at the time. At the time the tsunami was unseen and so the neighbors stayed behind. They refused to take the precautions and they perished. In our passage we have something similar only Noah didn’t have the option of fleeing to higher ground. He had to build a boat. At the time the danger was many years perhaps even decades away. We don’t know how long it took for him to build the boat but Noah believed that that disaster was real.

    The danger was real. God was speaking the truth and he could be trusted and thus he obeyed. I’ve called this evening’s message Noah’s Constructive Faith because his fearful conviction that disaster would come as God had predicted prompted him to construct a boat according to God’s direction. Noah’s faith produced actions. Actually it produced fear and then it produced action. Noah heard God’s voice, God’s declaration of judgment and rather than doubting it he believed. We often think of faith as positively believing that something good will happen. It’s almost synonymous with hope but we would hardly call it hope to expect the most devastating judgment the world has ever experienced. No, in this case Noah’s faith prompted him to fear and then to obey. Our Westminster Confession of Faith speaks of the multifaceted aspect of faith in chapter fourteen titled On Saving Faith in paragraph two.

    It’s in the back of our Trinity Salter hymnals on page 927. And it says this in chapter fourteen point two paragraph two By this faith, speaking of saving faith, a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the word for the authority of God himself speaking therein and acteth differently upon each particular passage thereof containeth yielding obedience to the commands trembling like Noah at the threatenings and embracing the promises of God for this life and that which is to come. Faith is not simply a confidence that things will go well it is also the conviction that God is serious in his determination to judge sin. Faith recognizes the certainty the danger of God’s coming judgment and just as Noah believed God would really send a flood and so obediently made extensive provision by constructing a massive boat when very possibly no big body of water was even in sight the eyes of faith today observe that no matter how distant in time God’s ultimate judgment appears his judgment is certain certain against sin no matter how it may look like the wicked are prospering and getting away with wickedness faith believes God’s judgment is certain and it fears and this fear prompts action no one else was building boats no one else even joined Noah besides his own family in the end no one else on earth believed that God was serious so no one else took action until it was too late faith doesn’t wait and see if God’s judgment will come it takes the threat of God’s judgment against sin seriously and makes provision now to ensure safety of course in our circumstances this doesn’t mean building boats it means repenting of sin calling on the name of the Lord for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to be applied to your account and your life by the Holy Spirit but this faith will put you at odds with the world just as it did with Noah which brings us to our second point number two faith condemns the world the story of Noah and the boat that he built is often recounted to children of young ages church nurseries are often decorated with murals of the boat filled with animals and a rainbow but the actual story is quite dark a floating zoo and a rainbow are nice things to paint on nursery walls but the backdrop for these things was worldwide carnage during our visit to Japan we heard many stories and saw pictures and videos of the immense destruction and devastating power of a very small flood from the tsunami we met one man who went out for groceries before he got back his wife and child were swept away never to be seen again he never saw them again the Bible doesn’t give us a population count of the earth at the time of Noah but people have made rough estimates based on the information we do have in Genesis concerning the length of life of those individuals recorded and there could easily have been many more than the eight plus billion people estimated to be living on earth alive today some put it in the hundreds of billions of people possible to be alive but even if it was extraordinarily as small as the population that we currently have only eight plus billion that’s a lot of death old men young women children even babies were drowned in a matter of hours Genesis chapter seven verses twenty one and twenty three recounts and all flesh died that moved on the earth birds livestock beasts all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth and all mankind everything on the dry ground in whose nostrils was the breath of life died he blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens they were blotted out from the earth only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark I don’t think we often think as much about this grim reality we are living in a massive graveyard animal fossils can be found everywhere preserving the images of the sudden and overwhelming destruction of God’s judgment against sin there has never been anything that comes close to the devastation of this event of course thanks to the rainbow we know there never will the author of Hebrews doesn’t elaborate specifically on what it means that Noah’s faith condemned the world but very likely he is thinking of something along the lines of what Jesus says in Matthew chapter twelve Matthew chapter twelve verses forty one through forty two in Matthew chapter twelve Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees an adulterous generation and he says the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold something greater than Jonah is here the queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold something greater than Solomon is here well it’s possible in this passage in Matthew twelve that Jesus means that the believing Ninevites will actively condemn the generation which saw and heard and rejected Jesus Christ himself even if they did not say a word the example of the people of Nineveh would cast shame and condemnation on those who had heard Jesus himself preach and yet disbelieved similarly if Noah never said a word to his generation his faith would have stood in contrast would have stood as shame to his generation one of the reasons is it also took away the excuse that some might have offered for disbelief in Noah’s day because once Noah believed God’s warning of a worldwide flood it was impossible for the wicked doubting generation to claim that they could be excused for not believing since no one believed God Noah’s belief ripped away that excuse from anyone trying to claim that the problem was in God’s unbelievably and not their own stubbornness and hardness of heart that would have been if Noah had been silent his faith would have condemned his generation but I don’t think that we’re meant to think that Noah was silent all those years that he was building the ark the apostle Peter makes mention of Noah in both of his epistles to his churches in second Peter chapter two verse five Peter calls Noah a herald of righteousness the word herald is translated as preacher in other places and the verb is the main one translated for preaching so Noah was a preacher according to second Peter and then we see this more in first Peter chapter three verses eighteen through twenty you may want to turn to this passage since this sentence is a little long and complicated that’s first Peter chapter three verses eighteen through twenty Peter says this for Christ also suffered once for sins the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formally did not obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared in which a few that is eight people were brought safely through water granted this is a very complicated sentence this is actually exactly the kind of sentences I used to write in college and would go to the writing center and Callie would help me untangle them but Peter’s making two separate points in this long sentence but he connects them in a complicated way by the end of verse eighteen which references Christ doing something in the spirit he picks that up in the next verse in nineteen so we see that in the spirit Christ went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison what is Peter talking about what we see next these spirits were disobedient despite God’s patience in the days in Noah’s day while some people have offered very complex and elaborate interpretations of this passage the simplest explanation is that Peter is simply referencing the preaching of Noah to an unbelieving world God warned Noah of judgment that was not only Noah building a boat as an act of faith but Noah was also proclaiming God’s salvation at that time even though Christ had not been born was not bodily present Peter’s saying Noah’s preaching for people to heed God’s warning of judgment and to come to the ark to be saved was Christ in spirit proclaiming salvation to those who were present at the time so that Christ was preached in Noah’s day as well Peter’s two inspired letters seem to clearly indicate that Noah’s faith which prompted him to build an ark also prompted him to preach so on top of his existence as a believer being a condemning contrast to the world his message of warning against God’s coming judgment was also condemning unbelievers hate to hear about God’s salvation in Christ because before you even mention judgment it is already implied salvation offered implies a need for it which of course the backdrop is God’s judgment his holy wrath against sin if God hates sin then it matters how I live what I do what I say and what I think in Romans chapter one verse thirty two the apostle Paul describes the ungodly he says though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them you see the wicked are not content to do wickedness themselves but they must go further to seek approval and to approve of others of their wickedness despite the fact that many will claim they delight in wickedness in the end this is simply their own attempt to silence the voice of their own conscience and wish away the coming judgment of God that deep down they know is true you will quickly find if you spend much time with unbelievers that they become uncomfortable simply by the presence of believers throughout middle school and high school I participated in many theater productions with kids who were not always professing Christians without me even mentioning a word about their coarse and profane language they would begin apologizing to me for their use of certain words in my presence I found this to be the same case at work as well simply the fact that I failed to use more of those vulgar words made people around me feel uncomfortable I was friendly to them but I just refrain from using certain words and that made them feel condemnation they need to apologize to me of course I told them you don’t need to apologize to me it’s God if you think it’s wrong talk to him about it without speaking a word of judgment or condemnation my faithful speech made the world around me feel uncomfortable condemned and this is what faith does if you have true faith expect that it will inherently come across as condemnation to an unbelieving world Noah was building the instrument of salvation and surely was offering that salvation to those around him but they only viewed it his faith as condemnation of them so faith will be viewed by the world as condemnation but finally consider how faith is viewed by God and this is number three faith inherits righteousness now while I phrase this point as an action for parallelism with the other points faith inherits righteousness the phrasing in our passage is slightly different it says Noah became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith in the Greek the phrase the righteousness that comes by faith is placed at the front literally this phrase might read of the righteousness which comes by faith he became an heir the author of Hebrews does not want us to forget for a moment where true righteousness comes from why would he want to remind us of this well if we go back to Genesis chapter six verse nine we see this said about Noah these are the generations of Noah Noah was a righteous man blameless in his generation Noah walked with God the author of Genesis is not focused on specifying the source of Noah’s righteousness or his the means of his becoming righteous now this goes along with what the Old Testament generally by and large is less clear in this regard this doesn’t mean that the Old Testament contradicts the New Testament in any way or suggests that there is an alternative means of salvation simply that in the Old Testament the relationship between faith and righteousness is not as often or as clearly spelled out as in the new but the author of Hebrews looking back at Genesis six he doesn’t want his readers us to have the slightest bit of confusion Noah’s righteousness to the extent that it was true righteousness was a righteousness that comes by faith if we look back one verse previously in Genesis chapter six verse eight we find the justification for this it says Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord several weeks ago when we looked at Hebrews chapter eleven verse six we saw the author of Hebrews line of thinking verse six in Hebrews eleven 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 so it goes like this Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord which just means he pleased God if Noah pleased God it must be because he had faith since without faith it is impossible to please God so in Genesis six verse eight it says but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord and then next in verse nine it says Noah was a righteous man blameless in his generation notice the order of the verses Noah pleased God which means he possesses faith and then he is described as righteous we might expect it to be come in the opposite order Noah was a righteous man blameless in his generation and as a result Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord I find myself often falling into this line of thinking in regards to myself as long as I keep God’s rules he’ll keep loving me and looking out for me there can be a kind of comfort in that kind of thinking as long as we’re able to keep up as long as we’re able to exceed the expectations of ourselves and others maintain a good appearance before others but what about when you stumble then it’s devastating not only must you face up to your own failures but your eternal salvation God’s whole relationship with you is called into question if you’re acting on that assumption how will you ever recover frankly coming to this point is most often the way that we discover subconsciously our inverted understanding of salvation and this is why we must return to the scriptures again and again and be reminded of the proper logic of salvation Noah found favor in God’s eyes and then he became righteous then he was counted as righteous he received the righteousness of faith but before we finish with this verse I want to return to the idea of becoming an heir of righteousness because Hebrews 11 verse 7 doesn’t say that Noah became righteous but that he became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith why does he say it that way well we’ve already seen the author of Hebrews mention this idea of heir earlier all throughout the book in Hebrews 1 verse 2 Jesus is described as the heir of all things in chapter 1 verse 4 the name that he has inherited is more excellent than the angels verse 14 of chapter 1 the angels are described as servants of those who are to inherit salvation then in chapter 6 of Hebrews inheritance is explicitly mentioned again verse 11 speaks of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises and verse 17 describes believers as heirs of the promise Hebrews chapter 915 ties Christ’s sacrificial death to the release of eternal inheritance to the heirs the idea of heirs and inheritance continue to show up in chapters 11 and 12 as we’ll continue to see going forward but i think it is really the end of chapter 11 where we find the reason best spelled out Hebrews chapter 11 verses 39 and 40 it says and all these though commended for 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 by describing Noah as someone who becomes an heir of righteousness that comes by faith the writer of Hebrews is highlighting the tension of the salvific reality in which believers live an heir is someone who both possesses something and does not the nature of an heir is that he possesses the rights to a future reality which has not yet fully come into existence there are heirs to companies heirs to estates heirs to kingdoms they each possess the right to something that they do not yet fully take possession of they do not have full possession of because once an heir takes the throne he’s no longer an heir, he is king we speak of the distinction of living by faith versus living by sight and this is because faith is grasping, apprehending taking hold of realities that have not yet fully arrived on the one hand justification by faith God’s declaration of our complete innocence and righteousness based on the life, death and resurrection of Christ is immediately applied by the spirit to our souls and this happens apart from our existential existential righteousness it is based entirely upon Christ’s merits and it is counted to us yet on the other hand we are in sorry shape we fail to live up to our new identity in Christ and it is that it is this that the writer of Hebrews is focusing on I think in chapter eleven faith brings us into possession of the rights to something that we do not yet fully existentially possess God has designed for his maximum glory and our maximum good and satisfaction in him that our salvation happen in two separate stages that we should possess by faith a promise of a yet to be a not yet reality before possessing that reality in full that we should exist first as heirs destined to inherit the promise but not yet possessing it in its fullness we need to be reminded of this not only because we stand in a long line a large community of believers who have staked their lives on this hope but because also there are some even us who might get contentedly distracted by what we already do possess it is good to be content in God it is essential that we gratefully enjoy all that God has given us now and is for us now but it is a dreadful mistake to think that the extent to which we possess regeneration justification and sanctification are all there is or that they are an end in and of themselves in fact if we completely stop looking for something more than what we already have we come to lose faith faith says thank you Lord for justification for declaring me righteous on based on the work of Christ for sanctification for washing me clean and setting me apart but I’m looking forward to when I’m not just accounted righteous but truly am righteous I’m looking forward to when I’m not just empowered to fight sin I’m not even tempted by it fully glorified and not as an end in and of themselves but as a means to perfect fellowship with God in conclusion we’ve seen that Noah’s faith was manifested by his actions believing God’s warning that a flood was coming and building an ark meanwhile Noah’s faith made him an heir of righteousness which he could never merit by his works but came by faith Noah’s faithful action saved him and his family from temporary destruction and his faith in God saved him from eternal destruction but by its very nature Noah’s faith created a contrast between him and the wicked world and will do the same for you and I our faith the instrument by which we receive salvation also condemns the world so it is understandable that the world would hate us for our faith but it is at the same time their only hope to escape God’s judgment so like Noah we hold fast to God’s promises and predictions and faithfully proclaim his salvation to those around us who are otherwise condemned Father in heaven we thank you for the example and testimony of Noah and the glorious order of salvation logic then Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord and then Noah was declared righteous Lord we ask that you would give us that same faith you would help us to realize more deeply the way that your favor your choosing of us is not based on us or anything within us but that you love us and you then give us righteousness that comes by faith we thank you praise you in Jesus name well in response let’s turn to our hymnals and sing hymn four hundred and twenty and let’s stand as we sing in four twenty Christ for the world we sing

    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.

  • Realizing Invisible Realities

    Realizing Invisible Realities

    About this sermon

    “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith gives present reality to what believers hope for and changes how they see God, themselves, and others, as lost or saved instead of rich or poor. By faith the people of old received God’s commendation. By faith we understand that God created the universe by his word, so that he did not make what is seen out of visible things. No one comes to the Scriptures neutrally; the alternative to faith is rebellion, not innocent ignorance, so believers must come humbly, ready to submit and believe.

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    Sermon transcript

    Well, our text is taken from the book of Hebrews, chapter 11. There are 95 of your pew Bibles, if you’d like to follow along. Reading verses one through three of Hebrews chapter 11. This is the word of God. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen. For by it, the people of old received 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. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, you who spoke the universe into being, you who have spoken new life into us, you who have breathed out this, your very word for us, and preserved it by your spirit throughout the ages for us to read and study this evening, we ask that you would send your spirit that this word would protect us, that we would have your spirit, that we might hear and live, that you would open the eyes of our hearts.

    Lord, without you, if you do nothing, these are dead words. We ask that you would come by your spirit. You would make us alive and receptive to your word. We pray that you would come by your spirit. Amen. May be seated. What can you see? Many of you in the science class that our eyes can only detect a small range of electromagnetic waves. What we think of as light that we can see is a small bandwidth that lies within the wide range of electromagnetic waves. The waves are on the long end of the sun. The gamma rays are on the shortest end. But most of the waves are completely invisible to us. So how do we see these invisible waves? Well, some animals have actually two pairs of eyes. There are some rattlesnakes, for instance, that have a pair of eyes for seeing visible light and a pair of infrared eyes that can sense infrared rays, which are not visible light, so that even when it’s pitch black, they can see small animals that give off infrared rays.

    Now, since our eyes can detect them, we have to use instruments to see these waves. Radio waves get turned into sound that we can hear. But infrared waves can only be seen using special equipment. We need special goggles or to see certain kinds of light that can’t be detected with our eyes. We have to rely on systems that detect these things. And today, we often take for granted the reality of these invisible realities. But it took science a long time to discover and confirm their existence. Over time, the evidence for these invisible realities is unmistakable and irrefutable. But it’s time for the scientific community to accept that these things are real, even though they could not see them with their own eyes in any way. Now, in our passage this evening, the writer of Hebrews is talking about seeing these realities as well.

    But he’s not talking about light waves. He’s talking about seeing God and what God has done. We don’t use scientific instruments to see God. We use faith, faith by which we access invisible, but profoundly real reality. The author of Hebrews presents this in three plays out in our text, verses one, two, and three. Number one, faith gives hope reality. And number two, faith garners the commendation of God. Number three, faith grants hope. Number one, faith gives hope reality. Now, on the outset of our passage, we have to take a look at the translation of verse one. On the ESV, it says, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Now, the way the ESV translates this verse is true with the rest of scripture. And there are many other translations that translate this passage similarly.

    Would be more along the lines of faith is the reality of things hoped for, the demonstration of things unseen. The word translated by the ESV as assurance in verse one normally means reality in other contexts. It seems to be the one who pioneered the translation of this word as confidence or assurance. While that meaning does go along with the rest of what the author of Hebrews is talking about, it doesn’t do justice to the actual word choice in the Greek. The word is hypostasis, hypostatic union. It’s a term to talk about how while Christ has both a divine nature and a human nature, he exists as a single person. Two natures, but one person. Let me call this the hypostatic union coming from the word hypostasis. The Stoic philosophers used hypostasis about a being that has entered into material existence.

    Or more generally, the term sometimes refers to a plan that could be made reality by action or construction. So when the ESV translates it as assurance, it is focusing on the subjective aspect of faith. The confidence assurance that a person possesses when they have faith. But the other place hypostasis, it appears that a more objective reality. And it seems to make more sense within our passage that the writer of Hebrews is speaking of the object of faith being the reality rather than the subjective aspect of faith. By using the word hypostasis, here the author is intending to say more than that faith is the assurance of hope. He’s highlighting how faith brings reality, existence to hope. In Romans chapter 8, verse 24, the apostle Paul talks about the nature of hope. He says, now hope that is seen is not hope.

    For who hopes? Hope is looking forward to the future. It is intrinsically looking towards what has not yet happened. Faith then brings that reality into the present. John Piper sometimes defines hope as faith in future grace in an attempt to highlight the relationship that faith and hope have to each other. Faith, a present confidence in grace which is still yet to come. That is what hope is. Will God forgive my sins tomorrow? Will Jesus come back as he promised? Will I ever be free finally from the presence of sin? Will I have strength in the next hour to fight sin and hold on to Jesus? Hope looks ahead and says, I’m sure right now that the grace will be there when I need it. Hope looks forward to that which does not yet exist. It looks forward to what has not yet be seen.

    But faith gives hope reality by connecting that future into the present. And the writer of Hebrews is highlighting the way that faith impacts us in the present. Hope is looking at something that has not yet happened. But faith is a present current. Faith takes what hope is looking at in the future and puts it in our hearts and lives now. Faith is the reality of things hoped for. And then we also see in verse one that it is the conviction of things not seen. Now this word conviction as the ESV translated is elikos, which means proof or proving. Now the ESV says conviction, but since the verse had just mentioned assurance, we might think in terms of conviction of belief. But rather this Greek word, we should think of convicting evidence. The scriptures never portray faith as a blind leap in the dark, as a baseless trust or something that goes against reason.

    Faith is always based upon God’s word. It is a faith in what God has said and who he is based on what he has revealed. But what does it mean for faith to be the proving or the proof of things that cannot be seen? Well, it is through faith that things which are not visible currently become as certain, if not more, than what we can observe with our senses. The Christian life is all about laying hold of something not yet fully revealed. The writer of Hebrews will go on to give example after example in chapter 11 of the way that the saints who came before were grasping invisible realities as though they were more certain than what they could see with their eyes in front of them. This is what faith does. It enables the Christian to embrace, apprehend and possess certain realities that others are blind to.

    The writer of Hebrews has just been talking about the contrast between sketches of the Old Testament priests, sacrifices, and tabernacle of Jesus, the true high priest, and sacrifice who enters into the true tabernacle, which is God’s presence. The sketches and shadows could be seen, touched, and smelled, but the reality they pointed to was invisible. Although Jesus Christ was not invisible, his glory was veiled. His death appeared as though another Jewish man was being crucified by the Romans. But the reality was he was offering himself as a sacrifice, acting as a high priest, entering the very presence of God to complete a cleansing for sin. And it is faith that sees and grasps what is really going on. Only faith can see what is more real than what eyes alone can see. And by this, we do not mean that faith conjures up reality by assertion, as the culture around us might suggest.

    Disney films went through a season of time, a number of years, a number of them would recommend the character facing hard situations to have faith wishing upon a star. Faith in these films was an abstract concept of believing things, believing that things would get better despite a complete lack of evidence. While it is helpful to be optimistic about the future, this is not the kind of faith that the author of Hebrews is talking about. That faith was not in anyone or anything in particular, just belief despite evidence that circumstances are bound to get better sooner or later. But when faith is severed from God in that way, it loses its meaning. It loses the reality it’s meant to be connected to, it’s meant to demonstrate. On the other hand, there are some churches which mistakenly teach that our subjective belief somehow creates physical realities.

    This is not what the author of Hebrews is saying either. He’s not saying that faith creates reality. He’s saying that faith can see it. Faith accesses it. Like infrared glasses, which are able to view light waves which are invisible otherwise to our eyes. Faith sees what is otherwise invisible. Faith is a means by which God’s intervention is channeled to the individual. Our own belief in God’s promises is the instrument by which God gives us salvation. God’s sovereign power is observed, embraced, and received by faith. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5, 16 speaks about the way that faith transforms the way that we look at Christ. He says, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him as thus no longer.

    Regarding Christ according to the flesh is to despise him, to devalue him, to consider Christ and his work as of no consequence. The unbeliever looks at Christ and yawns. He sees neither the glory of Christ nor his own desperate need for Christ and his work. Only through the eyes of faith can a person begin to understand that without the life that is found in Christ, he is hopeless. But once God gives a person faith, they look at things differently. Just like the kid with the brand new infrared glasses who suddenly begins looking at everything that was ordinary with a new interest, suddenly being able to see things that were invisible to him before. It makes him take a second look and reevaluate everything in a new light. With the eyes of faith, we look at God differently.

    We also look at ourselves and other people differently. Instead of seeing people as primarily rich or poor, black or white, we see them as primarily lost or saved. And this brings us to our second point in verse two. Number two, faith garners the commendation of God. Look at verse two, for by it the people of old received their commendation. Here we have the ground for why our faith. Why faith is our point of access to invisible realities. By faith, the saints of old received commendation. Now, the word here, commendation, is the Greek word martyreo. In the noun form, this is where we get the word martyr. But what’s confusing is that in English, martyr has come to mean someone who dies for his faith. The Greek word originally didn’t have anything to do with dying.

    It was about being a witness, giving a testimony. But it was these early witnesses to Christ who were often persecuted to death for the faith they testified about. But in the Greek, it just means testimony. And in our passage, the verb is in the passive past tense. The people of old were testified about. They were spoken well of. In the past tense especially, this word has the implication of a favorable testimony. So by faith, the people of old were spoken well of. They were commended. But by whom? While the verse itself does not answer the question, clearly from the context, the one commending these people is God, as we’ll see in the rest of the chapter. In verse one, we were thinking about how faith allows us to see and access otherwise invisible realities. But in verse two, we’re moving to the application and declaration of those realities to us.

    The reason we can see otherwise invisible things by faith is because otherwise impossible things have been declared of us. It is by faith that the saints of old were commended. Justification is the declaration of God’s people who have done everything wrong instead to be completely innocent and having done nothing wrong. But this declaration of righteousness does not come from lying or deception. It comes from the work of Christ. Second Corinthians 521 says, for our sake, he made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Christ was legally credited with wickedness that he did not do and punished for it. But he rose from the dead and clothed his people with his own perfect righteousness. Justification is the commendation of God and is received by faith.

    The apostle Paul in Romans chapter 4, verse 3, quoting from Genesis says, for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. This verse, we have a restatement of what Hebrews 11, 2 is expressing. God’s commendation, his justification only comes by means of faith. The utter scandal of this concept causes many to reject it. Righteousness, the commendation of God, cannot come by any act on our part. Our own actions are unable to garner the slightest bit of commendation from God. As Romans 3, 20 says, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. All attempts to keep the law in any way, shape, or form cannot make up the slightest bit of difference to our guilty standing before God. And in fact, they only add to our guilt, since they are not according to faith.

    The righteousness that God requires, that God approves of, the only true righteousness must come from outside ourselves and can only be accessed by faith. But the scandal of justification by faith, it’s not discount anything we might attempt to do to earn it. The scandal also comes from the fact that it seems too easy. How could true righteousness, God’s genuine commendation, be accessed merely by believing? But this is the beauty of the gospel. Since God’s commendation can only be garnered by faith, it highlights the one-sided nature of salvation. The only thing you can contribute to your own salvation is the sin that you must be saved from. The sin that Jesus was executed for is your contribution. What God contributes is everything. Your only role is to listen to God’s promise of justification and believe it.

    In case we were tempted to think that we deserved credit for believing the promises, believing the promises of the most trustworthy being in all the universe, Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8 assures us, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. Faith is the gift of God. The ability to believe God’s promise, as Abraham did, is itself a gift. And this is because all men and women, of course, are born with a rebellious disposition towards God. Not only do we disbelieve God, we also hate him. So for a person to turn from a hater of God to a lover and truster of God takes a miracle. When that miracle happens, a person hears God’s promise of salvation, and instead of hating it or being bored by it, they can see their own immense need for God’s righteousness and believe in God’s ability and willingness to give it when he is asked.

    This leads to the possession of previously invisible realities. Suddenly hope of a future glorious salvation comes into the present and becomes a reality. God’s commendation of those who believe in him is on the grounds for their ability to see things otherwise unseen. Future realities of glory for the people of God are made possible by the commendation of God. As verse 2 says, for by faith the people of old receive their commendation. Faith gives hope reality because it garners the favor of God. And thirdly, faith grants understanding, verse 3. Finally, in verse 3, we see that faith doesn’t just reveal invisible realities and garner the favor of God. It also is the basis of our ability to understand reality. Verse 3, 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.

    Sinful man chases a myriad of ludicrous explanations for the existence of the universe, the Earth, and ourselves. The theory of evolution was not invented by Charles Darwin. He merely offered a more modern mechanism. We have writings from the ancient Greek philosophers absurdly speculating about random chance producing the entire universe. Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Without the fear of the Lord, wisdom is based upon man’s own rebellious attempt at autonomy. And true wisdom can never be found on that path. It is wicked and wrong. The theory of evolution does not arise from observation but from a rebellious attempt to take the credit of creation from God. Apart from regeneration, men with rebellious hearts hate God and will do anything to justify their own autonomy. Common tenet of the unbelieving worldview is that any invisible immaterial reality does not exist.

    Because based on this assertion, they could rule out the existence of God. But of course, it also rules out the existence of logic, of love, immorality, which do not have material substance. Sinful man’s autonomous reasoning always ends up unable to account for the world that we live in and the reality that he takes for granted. Many people assume that man’s problem is ignorance. Secular humanism insists that man is basically good and only needs some education. In this view, understanding precedes faith. But unfortunately, many Christians easily fall into this thinking as well. We can easily begin thinking that the problem is unbelievers haven’t been convinced by the arguments for God’s existence. But actually, it’s not an understanding problem. It’s a heart problem. Last week, I spoke with a man who claimed he was an agnostic. When I pressed him to discover the truth by reading God’s word, he finally admitted he didn’t want to read it and didn’t want to find out if there was truth.

    Now, praise God, two other young men who were agnostics I also spoke with last week were open to discovering God through the reading of the Gospel of John and praying for God to reveal himself to them. The writer of Hebrews is reminding us in verse 3 that it is faith that grants understanding, not understanding that grants faith. Augustine of Hippo was a North African pastor and writer in the early church. He lived in the 300s about 1,700 years ago. And he famously stated, I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather I believe in order that I may understand. Based on this, the study of Christian doctrine has often been described as faith seeking understanding. If we go back to the analogy of light waves or other invisible realities from the scientific realm, the starting point for understanding them has to be the belief that these realities exist.

    It is impossible to study something you do not even believe exists. But the situation just described is assuming the possibility of neutrality. And as I mentioned earlier, the alternative to faith is not innocent ignorance, it’s rebellion. We must come to the scriptures with an attitude of humility, of acceptance, submission, and belief. And the writer of Hebrews says, is pointing out that this must come from the very beginning of the scriptures, from verse 1. The Bible says in the beginning that God created the heavens and the earth. It is by faith that we take this as true, and upon this basis alone, that we have any hope of making sense of everything else. Not only does faith provide the basis of understanding in general, understanding God as creator, but it also gives us understanding that invisible realities, especially God, are the basis of, origin of, and foundation for the visible realities.

    We tend to prioritize our eyes. The good, the bad, and the ugly that we see right in front of us often holds our greatest attention. Our worries, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, and preoccupations are often what we see right in front of us. This is understandable. But it doesn’t take faith to live with the visible world that is here and now as a priority. What takes faith is to live as though this world that we see and touch is less real and less important than God. Faith understands the purpose of this world is to bring glory to God. The world has no independent purpose. It was not created for its own sake, and we were not created for our own sake. What is visible was made out of what is not visible. God created this world and us to be for his praise and his glory.

    When you have faith, you begin to understand things properly. Without faith, people go out searching for all sorts of destinies for mankind that avoid God. But faith grants understanding of why we are here, because it can see who God is. All of this creation, including ourselves, is a contingent reality. Contingent means it’s depending on something else. You need food, air, all a myriad of things to continue existing. All of visible reality and ourselves is dependent on something outside of ourselves to continue existing, but not God. There’s nothing you can take away from God to make him die, weaken, or not exist. We call that necessary existence. God alone is the only necessary being in existence. Everything else that exists depends upon him, and he depends upon nothing. You can’t starve God, or make him lonely, or destroy him in any way, shape, or form.

    He is self-contained and self-existent. Even within the fellowship of the Trinity, he needs nothing from no one, nothing from anyone. God is life in existence itself, the source of all life and existence. As such, his existence demands our complete adoration and worship. There’s no one and nothing greater. All we see around us pales in comparison to God in all his splendid glory. By faith, we understand God’s preeminence and begin to order our lives and priorities accordingly. Instead of putting ourselves and our plans at the center of our reality, we place God and his glory, his plans, at the center. He is the basis of this world, not the other way around. As we’re going to see throughout the rest of Hebrews 11, this kind of understanding that comes by faith enabled the saints of old to live radically different lives from the world around them.

    The call to have faith is a call to fix your eyes, the eyes of your heart rather, upon God. And the more you look at God by faith, the less consequential the visible reality will be. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Faith gives us eyes to see the glory of God, his utter uniqueness and brightness with our hearts even when we can’t see him with our eyes. It is by faith that we see God, receive his commendation, and understand that he made the world for his own glory. So the call is to believe. Amen. Let’s pray. Amen. Father in heaven, Lord God, you who spoke the universe into existence, we depend upon you for our existence. You were not made for us, but we were made for you. Lord, we thank you for the gift of faith by which we can have a restored relationship with you.

    We can receive your commendation. We can see and understand you and your purpose for us, for the world. And we can live in the light of your priority and glory. Lord, we ask that you would give us faith. You would increase our faith. We might see you better and better. We might understand you more and more. And we might live in the pleasure of your countenance, the pleasure of your fellowship. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. We’ll conclude by singing hymn 517. Let’s stand as we sing hymn 517. I know whom I have believed.

    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 Best of Both Worlds

    The Best of Both Worlds

    About this sermon

    The Christian life can look like a string of trade-offs, but faith sees it as trading a penny for a thousand-dollar bill. The believers addressed in Hebrews joyfully accepted the plundering of their property, because they knew they had a better and abiding possession. Hebrews shows Christ as better than all that came before, with a better covenant, a better sacrifice, and a better hope. God himself is the reward of those who endure, and those who live by faith will not be disappointed.

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    Sermon transcript

    Well, our scripture text this evening is taken from the book of Hebrews. This evening we’re looking at Hebrews chapter 10. And we’re looking at verses 32 through 39. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 32 through 39. This is the word of God. 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, but 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 the 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. Amen. Let’s pray. Lord God in heaven, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we ask that you who have spoken this word, you have written it down for our instruction, you have preserved it for us, this God-breathed word, we ask that you would come now and you would be present, that your people might hear your word, they might hear the word of God and they might believe it. As for your spirit, we need your spirit to help us hear it. We need your spirit in the proclaiming. We ask that you would do this for the sake of Jesus Christ.

    In his name we pray, amen. You may be seated. What do you see? We call people visionaries who are able to look beyond their natural eyes with their mind’s eye to see things that others are oblivious to. Leaders need vision. It’s not that they need good eyesight with their physical eyes, but they need to be able to see beyond what their physical eyes can tell them. They need to see with their mind a path, a direction, a way to go before they can even see it with their physical eyes. And this evening we’re talking about a sight that goes beyond eyesight. There are some people who can see a more ultimate reality than what their physical eyes can see. These people have faith. Not a blind faith. A clear-eyed faith that can see what others miss completely.

    Now the phrase, the best of both worlds, which is the title of the message this evening, refers to a situation in which there are no trade-offs. A trade-off, of course, means having to give up something of what you want most. Having to settle for something less than perfect. To the unbeliever, the Christian life looks like a big trade-off. Yes, you supposedly get eternal life in the end, but look at everything that you have to give up. Christians are often called to lives of difficulty and sacrifice. But when one has eyes of faith, it no longer looks like a trade-off. Faith opens our eyes to see the reality that the Christian life is not a trade-off. It is truly the best of both worlds. With eyes of faith, to live now is fellowship with Christ and to die is even better.

    In other words, gain. Jesus did tell his followers to count the cost because it does involve a certain trade, a certain transaction. But the trade is comparable to a person trading a penny for a $1,000 bill. On the one level, you do give up the penny. But in terms of actual money, it is impossible to categorize it as a loss or as sacrifice. And the essence of faith is being able to look beyond the sacrifice of the penny and observe the monetary transaction, which equals 100,000 times the value. When one has eyes of faith, it becomes clear that the apparent sacrifice of the penny is purely gain. It is this perspective, these eyes, this mindset that gives rise to steadfast endurance and stable confidence despite difficulties. And in our passage this evening, we’re going to look at number one, what faith sees, what faith does, because of number two, what faith sees. which results in number three, what faith receives.

    Number one, what faith does. Verse 32, but recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. The author of Hebrews is calling for a quick trip down memory lane. He’s telling his readers to think back to when they first became Christians, when they were first regenerated. This is what he means by enlightened. This is not a technical term for conversion and it doesn’t get used very often in the New Testament. But the context makes it clear that this is a reference to their conversion. It calls them to think back on when their lives were first changed by the Holy Spirit’s regenerating work in their hearts, making them alive, giving them faith. And when that first happened, things were not easy. He says, you endured a hard struggle. This is one of the most significant characteristics of faith.

    The writer of Hebrews has been clear throughout his letter that endurance in confidence is his foremost concern for his readers. And in verse 36, he states very plainly, you have need of endurance. Now, there are differences between confidence, endurance, and faith. In this passage, the author is using them largely synonymously. He says, don’t throw away your confidence, for you have need of endurance. and proceeds to talk about having faith. Confidence and endurance are character qualities of faith. Faith is confident and it endures. So when the new believers were first enlightened, they exhibited the quality of endurance. Endurance is the ability to withstand hardship or pressure. The author reminds his audience that when they were first enlightened, they endured a hard struggle. He’s reminding them of this because he’s about to call them to maintain that endurance in verse 36.

    Endurance is not an optional aspect of faith. It is an integral characteristic. Faith, by its nature, endures through difficulty. Faith is not a one-off deal. It’s not an on-again, off-again, whenever it’s convenient. Faith is a conviction about what’s true, regardless of whether it is convenient or comfortable. It’s a belief in, trust in, loyalty to God, especially and despite difficulty. Someone who identifies with Christianity when it’s easy, accepted, and immediately advantageous, but disavows the faith when threatened or challenged, is not considered to have faith. Professed faith without endurance of difficulty calls into question the reality of faith. It is through that endurance that faith is demonstrated to be genuine. The Apostle Peter highlights this in 1 Peter 1, verses 6-7. Peter says, In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, though it perishes, though it is tested by fire, your faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

    Faith is found to be genuine through its staying power, its ability to endure difficulties. Faith does not skirt around or avoid difficulties. It endures through difficulties. In Acts 14, verse 22, Paul and Barnabas visited new believers in their church plants. And it says, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith. and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. These new believers had endured through hardship. Discipleship 101 in Christianity for Paul was that faith endures through trials, as we see in our passage. Trials and difficulties for faith come in all shapes and sizes. They come from within ourselves as well as from without. In Hebrews chapter 2, the writer speaks of drifting away, of neglecting, which might result in, as he mentions in our passage, throwing away your confidence, verse 35, or shrinking back, verse 39.

    Faith can atrophy like a muscle when it is not exercised, but the exercise of faith is always in the context of challenges to that faith. Faith is not exercised where there’s no threat to its existence. Satan leveled both barrels at Job. He started by destroying everything that Job owned, followed by his beloved children, and capped off by destroying Job’s health, bringing him to the very edge of death. Satan knew that losing his livelihood, his children, and his health would put great pressure on Job’s faith. Job’s friends weren’t very helpful in supporting his faith either, and they said that his primary problem was a lack of humble repentance for sin. And yet, despite his misery, Job clung onto his confidence in God. Counterfeit faith gives up when the going gets hard. Satan was betting that Job’s faith would be fake, that it would fail.

    But God preserved Job’s faith and it was proved to be the genuine article. But internal despair within our heads is not Satan’s only weapon against faith. Jesus warned Peter at the Last Supper that Satan had demanded to sift Peter like wheat. But he also said that he had prayed for Peter so that his faith would not fail and that he would be restored. Peter, of course, faced the fearful prospect of identification with the imprisoned and interrogated Jesus and he vehemently denied Christ multiple times. He crumpled under the pressure initially, but instead of permanently renouncing Christ, he was moved to tears of repentance at what he had done in that moment. And despite the momentary lapse, Jesus had told Peter that his prayers for him would ensure his ultimate restoration and his ultimate endurance. Now it seems as though the audience of the letter to Hebrews was facing some similar temptations to renounce their allegiance to Christ.

    And so the author begins by reminding them what they had already endured by their faith. Verse 32 and 33, 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. Along with the hard struggle, they also experienced sufferings, by which he means that they were persecuted for both their own profession and for their association with those who were persecuted. Now although Christian persecution in the first century did often involve physical harm and even death, Many commentators think that the audience of the book of Hebrews had not yet been physically harmed or killed based on Hebrews chapter 12 verse 4. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

    They take Hebrews 12 verse 4 as an indication that in this case the persecution had not reached personal harm. However, we see that in verse 34 the persecution had clearly involved having their property stolen or destroyed. For you had compassion on those imprisoned, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. What we have described here in verse 34 is truly extraordinary. Now, there was a group of Greek philosophers that aspired and prized self-control over one’s own emotions. And they were called the Stoics, which comes from the Greek word for porch, which is where they gathered to discuss their ideas. In English, the word Stoic has come to mean someone who is, like the Greek philosophers aspired to, unaffected by any emotion, remains constantly calm no matter what comes.

    And some people, when they hear the word endurance, might think that that’s what faith is aspiring to. Just to be unaffected by sadness or hardship or difficulty. But that’s not what the author of Hebrews has in view at all. You don’t need Christian faith to become a Stoic. You can do that without faith. The believers in verse 34 did something absolutely extraordinary. They got happy when they were stolen from. The endurance of faith is not mere grit your teeth and don’t show any expression. Faith goes beyond a stoic indifference to difficulty and persecution. It genuinely gets happy, joyful, in the face of being wronged against for the sake of the gospel. This is not natural. This only comes supernaturally. And it comes for one reason. It comes because of number two, what faith sees. We looked at what faith does.

    It endures despite difficulties. And this is because of what faith sees. When we look at verse 34, we see that the endurance of hardship, the radical rejoicing at the plundering of their property, was possible because they knew something. Their endurance was rooted in knowledge. They could see something by their faith, and that’s what gave them the ability to radically rejoice. Joy doesn’t come from sheer grit and determination. You can’t just grit your teeth, buckle down, and muster up some joy. It comes from experiencing, from seeing and loving beauty. Webster Dictionary says, joy is the emotion evoked by well-being, success, by the prospect of possessing what one desires. That is why it’s so strange for the believers in Hebrews chapter 10 to joyfully accept the plundering of their property. Joy seems very out of place in this instance.

    This apparently out of place joy comes from their perspective of faith. 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. Now in the Greek, there’s actually a play on words in this verse. The Greek words for property and possession come from the same root word. The root word when it’s a verb means to begin or to possess or to exist. And it turns out in Greek philosophical writings, the word which we translate possession often gets used metaphorically to talk about human being or human existence. And so while clearly referring to a literal possession, which believers have in verse 34, there’s a secondary connotation that the readers of the Greek might have noticed as well.

    They might have picked up on the double meaning of possession, which goes along with the theme of true existence or true reality. This is a theme that we’ve seen a lot in the book of Hebrews. The authors talked about how the tabernacle, the priests, and the sacrifices were only shadows or sketches pointing to the true being, the true reality of Christ. And now in verse 34 the author is saying these believers rightly considered their lost property merely earthly property. Shadows of the reality. Because they knew that their heavenly possession is the ultimate reality. It could not compare. Paul talks about the contrast of faith versus sight in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 7. There is a reality that we can see with our eyes and there’s a reality that we can see with our minds when we understand and believe God and take him at his word.

    When we see with our eyes in the present does not currently match what believers know will be the case. The contrast of faith versus sight. The believers in verse 34 were faced with a situation. If we show compassion, the same Greek word, sympathy, by the way, that Jesus had in Hebrews chapter four, verse 15, that he has for us. If these believers, if they show compassion and visit the other believers in prison, then the enemies will know that they are Christians too. They might try to hurt us or steal our stuff. With natural eyes, it looked like an obvious choice. Stay home. Why would you risk getting your car stolen, your home broken into, your computer smashed, your wallet taken? It’s not worth it. Stay home and stay safe. Sacrifice safety and security for a belief in God?

    You’re crazy. But with the eyes of faith, they saw something different. They compared their property, their car, their house, their bank account, their phone, their computer, everything else that they have with what they have in Christ. And when they did that, there was no question. They could see that they had a better and an abiding possession. Cars don’t last, especially in Pennsylvania winters. Houses don’t last. Computers, even bank accounts don’t last. But what they had in Christ is both better, and it lasts. It abides. The enduring power of faith doesn’t come from sheer grit. It comes from a supernatural gaze. When you look with the eyes of faith at the so-called sacrifices and trade-offs that you’re called to make, they don’t look like sacrifices. If I were to ask a four-year-old to trade me his bright, shiny penny, or even a brand new gold dollar coin for a $1,000 bill that I was offering him, he might refuse, or at least hesitate.

    A piece of paper for a solid, shiny gold coin? It might not seem like a good trade. But for someone who understands the money that these two objects represent, the choice is obvious. It hardly even feels like a trade. It’s a net gain, and so it’s hard to call it a sacrifice. And this is the perspective of faith. This is what Jesus is getting at in Matthew chapter 19, verses 27 through 30, in a conversation with Peter. Jesus in Matthew 19 verses 27 and 30 has just asked the rich young man to sell his possessions, give to the poor and follow Jesus. Verse 27, then Peter said in reply, see, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have? Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, in the new world, when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

    And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last first. Peter eagerly reminds Jesus of what he and the disciples have given up, sacrificed to follow him. Jesus doesn’t commend him for his austerity. He reminds him of the real trade. If Peter had in view the gain that following Jesus provided, he wouldn’t have bothered to mention all the things that they had left to follow Jesus. And yet just to make sure that Peter doesn’t see it as an austerity contest, He says, but many who are first will be last and the last first. Don’t think you can manipulate the system and try to purposely live destitutely as a way to earn heavenly rewards.

    The point is that when you look with faith on what the real trade is, you won’t be counting the pennies you traded for $1,000 bills. When you have eyes of faith, you count your possessions in this life as less important Economic loss in this life, which might have sapped the joy of someone living by sight, couldn’t dampen the joy of these believers who were living by faith. Faith doesn’t endure the loss of possessions like the fighter who says, hit me again, I can take it. It looks at what it possesses in Christ. Forgiveness of sins, clothed in His righteousness. Bold access into the very presence of God. Eternity as God’s adopted child. Fellowship with the triune God. Not to mention a remade creation and all the rest. And it says, I would be insane to let my earthly possessions impede me in any way on my way to glory.

    Paul puts the concept succinctly in 2 Corinthians 4, verses 17 to 18. He says, for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory, beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. I hope by now that you can see that the battle of faith is fundamentally a battle to see what is ultimate as ultimate, to see our possession in Christ as better, to see it for what it is. One commentator pulls together the better things that we see in Hebrews this way. He says with two qualifiers that are favorites of the author, the reward is said to be better and lasting. Jesus is greater than the angels, chapter one, verse four.

    His priesthood entails the introduction of a better hope, chapter seven, 19, and a better covenant, 722 and 86, enacted on better promises, And he offers a better sacrifice, 9.23, as his blood speaks better than that of Abel. Chapter 12, verse 24. And accordingly, the reward he offers is better than earthly possessions, secured in a better home. Chapter 11, verse 16, to be entered following a better resurrection. Chapter 11, verse 35. As we’ll see in chapter 11, Moses is an example of this perspective that the believers had in our passage. Chapter 11, verse 26, looking ahead, Moses, he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking to the reward. The gaze of faith which empowers endurance is a gaze upon the promises of God. What faith does is endure because of what faith sees, which leads to what faith receives.

    Number three, what faith receives. As faith looks, it endures and as a result, it receives the promise. The promise of God. Confidence and endurance are two elements of faith. Not only does endurance prove the genuineness of faith, but it is the only way to secure the promise. The biblical concept of faith always involves a perseverance. It is an ongoing reality. Faith is not something you did or had only previously. Faith is an ongoing perseverance because it is largely waiting on things still to come. Salvation received by faith involves a twofold reality, which is both already and not yet. We are free from the power of sin, but not free from the presence of sin. While there is much about our salvation that we receive in this life, there is much more that we still await.

    Verses 35 and 36. 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. Now when the writer throws in the phrase, having done the will of God, have they just changed the requirement? Is obeying God’s commands suddenly an additional prerequisite? Besides or even instead of faith? No, what he has in mind is what he’s been saying all along. In chapter six, he explained how Abraham received the promise. Chapter six, verse 15, and thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. And here we have, when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. Abraham’s task, like ours, to obtain God’s reward, the promise was to be patient, to trust God, to do it on his timetable.

    Faith is God’s chosen instrument for us to receive his gracious salvation. That is why every time that Protestant Christians talk about the various means of grace, we’re talking about things that involve our understanding. The Lord’s Supper is a means of grace, not based on its physical properties or magical infusions. We receive the benefits by faith. There are not inherent benefits to simply eating that bread or drinking that particular wine. The benefits come by faith, which means we have to understand it. For it to be a means of grace, we need to interact with it intelligently. intelligibly, we must partake of the sacrament with an understanding of our daily need for Christ to be living in us and the sacrifice that he made for us so willingly. Then we are assured of his love for us now and in the future.

    It strengthens our faith. And God uses other means of grace like prayer, Bible reading, worship, fellowship, to strengthen our faith. But grace doesn’t flow like a magical substance in spite of our understanding. There are times when God helps us beyond what we can understand and intervenes in the world and in our lives in supernatural ways. But biblical faith is not blind faith. It’s not a leap in the dark. It’s an apprehension, an understanding, an embracing of the mercy of God in Christ, who he is and what he has promised. Faith is not irrational optimism or advanced speculation. It’s having your eyes finally opened to see reality. Unbelievers can’t see Christ as he is. To them, he looks foolish, worthless, pitiful, not worth their time, certainly not worth endangering physical life or endangering earthly possessions. Missionaries who leave their own culture to try and learn a new language, to try to learn an entire culture with thousands of misunderstandings, to leave family and friends behind for the sake of the gospel, look insane.

    Without the eyes of faith, it looks like a terrible deal. Paul the Apostle agrees in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 19. 1 Corinthians 15, 19, he says, if in Christ we have hope in this life only, We are of all people most to be pitied. For Paul, if the Christian faith is a fool’s hope, if there’s nothing still to come in the next life, then Christians are the most pitiful of all people. We might have expected Paul to say that, well, if God’s promises don’t come true in the next life, being a Christian is still a pretty good deal. Paul says no. If there’s nothing coming, if this life is all there is, the sacrifice is totally bonkers. Faith sees reality. It sees the reward, and it also sees, but it also sees the looming reality of the judgment.

    Verses 37 through 39. For yet a little while in the coming, one will come and will not delay. For my righteous one will 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. The writer of Hebrews quotes from Habakkuk, which we read earlier in our service. God tells the prophet Habakkuk that the only way for a person to endure the coming judgment executed by the Babylonians will be by faith. Paul also famously quotes Habakkuk in Romans 117 in describing the Gospel, which is, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written from Habakkuk, quote, the righteous shall live by faith.

    Habakkuk begins his book distressed by the evil around him in Judah, but then gets even more upset at God’s revelation of his coming judgment upon Judah. God tells Habakkuk that faith is required to survive what’s coming. And by the end of the book, we find Habakkuk saying, I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us. And he essentially says, even if there is disaster all around me, I’ve still got God. And it will be OK. He’s exhibiting faith. He sees the situation differently. He can see a God, who God is. And that enables him to patiently wait. To trade temporary suffering for eternal bliss. Faith is banking on a future reward. It’s not looking to have everything in the here and now. It’s looking ahead. It’s not going to settle for having everything now in this life.

    Delayed gratification is something this world advocates. The secular culture understands the importance of delayed gratification and learning to avoid instant gratification, to put off immediate urges. For the sake of longer term, more ultimate rewards is one of the most important ingredients of a successful life in this life. And the secular culture understands this. But the delayed gratification this world advocates looks like instant gratification compared to the Christian faith. Because the Christian faith doesn’t settle for fame and riches and grandeur in this life. It’s got its eyes on something far better. Why settle for being a billionaire in this life when you could live in the New Jerusalem paved with gold? When you start to have that perspective, you start to live differently. Christians don’t give up comfort in this life just to be uncomfortable. They don’t have an upside down preference for pain.

    We call people who enjoy pain masochists. But that’s not what faith does at all. Faith simply understands that some things in this life simply don’t matter when they’re compared with what is to come. since you knew that you had a better possession and an abiding one. Christians give up comfort in this life because who cares if you’re comfortable for 70, 80, 90, if you’re uncomfortable for 70, 80, 90, or 100 years when it means that you can be with God forever. fellowship with the triune God, the maker of all things, the galvanizer of galaxies, the inventor of pleasure, the author of joy himself, the generator of grandeur, the designer of delight without end. This is what awaits the one who keeps the faith, who endures. Keep your eyes on the prize. which is God himself, and you will not be disappointed.

    Amen. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us your word to remind us of what is real. We ask that you would give us eyes of faith. We know that faith is a gift from you. We ask that you would give us faith that we might see what is real we might see that what we have in this life is not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed the weight of glory which awaits us in your presence fellowship with you now and forever we pray that you would give us these eyes of faith in Jesus name amen

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  • A Fearful Prospect

    A Fearful Prospect

    About this sermon

    Hebrews warns that anyone who goes on sinning deliberately after receiving the truth has no sacrifice left, only a fearful expectation of judgment. Such a person has trampled the Son of God underfoot, profaned the blood of the covenant, and outraged the Spirit of grace. Election and justification can never be lost, but some who profess faith in the visible church were never born again. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, and those who cast themselves on his mercy in Christ will be saved.

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    Sermon transcript

    Well, if you would remain standing, we’ll turn to the Book of Hebrews, we’ll be reading for our sermon text this evening, Hebrews chapter 10, and I’ll begin reading actually in verse 19, but our passage will start verse 26 through 31. So Hebrews 10 starting in verse 19 to give us some context, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with 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 stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet 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 deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged 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 fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would give us your spirit, the spirit that inspired this word, preserved it through the centuries, that we might have it to read it, to learn from it. We ask that you would work in our hearts, open them, that we might hear as we ought, hear with faith, that your spirit might make this preaching and hearing a factual means of grace to us. Lord, we ask for your help. We are hopeless without it. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. You may be seated. How important is it to believe in hell? When I was in seminary, I read a book called The Art of Pastoring by David Hansen.

    He recounted his years of pastoring in a small church in Montana with much of prayer and sermon meditation for him happening while fly fishing. In one of the chapters, though, he talked about his complicated relationship with the doctrine of hell. There was a time in his ministry in which he felt as though it was out of step with God’s character. He couldn’t imagine how a loving God could square with the doctrine of eternal suffering. It didn’t seem to square with the God of love that he thought he knew. This rejection of hell by him went on for several years of his life, but ultimately and eventually, instead of arguing for interpretation of texts in his book, Pastor David Hansen recounts his own ministry experience. At first, it seemed like a big relief. He didn’t have the stress of thinking about the awful fate of those who have not repented of their sins being tormented for all of eternity.

    But as Pastor Hansen continued to try to do ministry, he noticed something he hadn’t expected. Instead of ministry becoming more fulfilling and motivating, he found less and less urgency to do evangelism. If everyone’s going to be fine in the end, why should he get out of his comfort zone and tell believers, unbelievers the gospel? But then he also started to find his preaching on Sunday lacking urgency as well. If his congregation was going to be fine, whether they followed God’s word, believed his promises, kept the faith, fought sin in their lives or not, why get worked up? Even his weekly visits, ministering to the weak and hurting and sick and dying in the congregation began losing their urgency as well. And finally, he found his own life as a Christian faltering greatly. Pastor Hansen realized over time that by throwing out the doctrine of hell, he had gutted the motivation of pastoral ministry itself.

    In an attempt to be more loving than God, he realized that he had lost his reason for doing ministry at all, and maybe even for being a Christian. Once he realized what he had lost, he reexamined what the scriptures had to say, of course, about eternal judgment and found his way back to the biblical position of the sober reality of hell. As uncomfortable as hell is for us to deeply contemplate, it is essential to keep its reality in view as it provides the urgency for ministry and even the Christian life. I think our passage this evening was written with precisely this sort of end in mind. The writer of Hebrews is building on his encouragement in the previous verse to keep the day of judgment in mind in order to maintain a proper urgency in holding each other accountable.

    To make sure we understand this urgency, he goes into a very stern warning about what is at stake for those who are considering rejecting Christ and the Christian faith. We’ll look at our passage this evening in three ways. First, a pertinent warning, second, a persistent rebellion, and third, a personal judgment. Number one is the persistent warning. Now, persistent just means appropriate or right on target, suited for the occasion. What I have in mind here is partly the author’s inclusion of himself in the warning and his addressing this warning to the visible church. The warning in our passage comes right on the heels of the encouragement that the writer expressed in the previous verses, which we looked at last week. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25, and let us then consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

    The writer started out with encouragement, but he ended that verse with a reminder that he’s talking about serious stuff with eternal consequences. He wants his audience to start out by encouraging each other to keep meeting together, presumably in worship especially, but he calls attention to the coming day of judgment, and this flows right into the warning that we find in our passage this evening, verses 26 and 27, for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. The Christian life is deadly serious. What we do throughout our weeks and in our worship on Sunday often can feel rather mundane. We get up, we go about our day, either going to work, going shopping, working on projects, cleaning, eating, and everything else.

    Maybe we don’t get everything that we were hoping to get done that day. Maybe we get to enjoy some time off and go on a trip away. We go about our lives making plans for the future, saving our money, spending time with people we love. When things are going well and relatively comfortable, eternity can seem far away. Even Christians can lose sight of what’s at stake. This passage is a wake-up call, a reminder of the deadly consequences of rejecting the Lord. Once we’re saved, sometimes it can feel like we’re safe. Nothing more to worry about in terms of our soul. Justification once and for all. As long as we can avoid doing anything really big and bad, we’re in a good place. Now this warning is not meant to make all believers nervously asking themselves whether they have committed the unforgivable sin.

    The Bible is clear that the only sin that will not be forgiven is that which is not repented of. All repentant sinners will be forgiven. But the warning ought to make us remember the seriousness of this life and the next. The writer of Hebrews is doing his best to convince us that the stakes could not be higher. Failing to gather for worship might have felt like skipping a family reunion for those in the first century. But the author of Hebrews is warning that it can be the beginning of a wavering and even eventually a repudiating of the faith. His warning is directed towards those who quote, go on deliberately sinning after receiving a knowledge of the truth. But notice how the author continues to use the word we, if we go on. He’s including himself in this warning.

    And this is because what he’s talking about in this passage is apostasy. This is not a mere breaking of God’s law, high-handed rebellion that characterizes the lives of unbelievers and which believers sometimes fall into as well. Apostasy is a sin that only members of the covenant community can commit because it is an abandoning, a rejection of what was once held onto, participated in, and committed to. Those who never join a covenant community, the church, can never commit apostasy. And the problem is that apostasy, after seeking out and clinging on to the remedy of Christ, abandons it in search of something else. That’s why the author says there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment. We’ve been reveling for chapters now in the truth that Christ’s sacrifice is the only one which can provide real cleansing for our sin.

    And this is what provides the beneficiaries confident access into the holy places, God’s own presence. But now we are reminded of the other side of that reality, that if you reject Christ you have no remedy for sin. Forget about access to God’s presence, you won’t survive what’s coming. The writer calls it a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. The word translated fury of fire here is actually zealos from the Greek, which is where we get our word zealous. It is God’s holy wrath against sin. God often manifests his presence throughout the Bible by fire. God shows up to Moses as a burning bush. He leads the Israelites out of slavery and through the wilderness as a pillar of fire and descends on Mount Sinai, igniting the mountain.

    Of course, God is a spirit and he does not have a body. His relationship to his creation is exclusively on his terms. His choice to create such a thing as fire and then associate himself with it is meant to reveal something about him. He does not repel sin the way oil and water repel each other or the way opposing magnets might repel each other. God’s relationship to sin is like a fire which consumes it with an unending appetite. God will never tire of destroying sin and it takes no effort from him. And of course, while God does nothing involuntarily, his fury against sin is necessitated by his character and sin’s nature. I have never been close to a wildfire or even a house fire that was out of control. I’ve watched some videos of people that were very close and I’ve seen the aftermath of some very bad house fires.

    But I can only imagine the terror one would experience when facing an immense raging blaze. My understanding is that with forest fires, it isn’t possible to put out the fire. The firefighters simply do their best to contain it until it burns itself out. Once a blaze gets that big and gets that hot, all they can do is let it run out of fuel. They cut down trees and dig ditches in an effort to control its spread, but in the end, the only solution is to let it burn what it’s already ignited and to try to keep new stuff from catching. There’s no stopping God’s wrath against sin on your own. It would be like a single firefighter attempting to put out a wildfire with a household fire extinguisher or a bucket of water. You don’t stand a chance.

    Without Christ’s sacrifice, you are God’s adversary and left with the dreadful prospect of his consuming wrath. As verse 27 says, a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Adversaries are those opposed to God. They are his enemies. And so secondly, we see that those who reject Christ are in a persistent rebellion. Verses 28 and 29, anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the Spirit of grace? We have a rather terrifying description of those who have or are in the process of rejecting the faith. What might have been unclear in verse 26 with the phrase go on sinning deliberately becomes clear in verses 28 and 29.

    He says setting aside the law. Setting aside the law is not merely breaking the law. While in one sense all of sin is rejection of God’s law and his authority, what’s in view here is a wholesale repudiation of the standing or even validity of God’s law. When a follower of Christ falls in a moment of temptation, although he is believing the empty promises of sin and rejecting the promises of God in that moment, he has not repudiated the law entirely. It is one thing to knowingly break a standard, but it is another to assert that there are no legitimate standards. The argument here is from the lesser to the greater. From the law of Moses, how much worse punishment, he asks, is deserved? And this is similar to his argument that he gave us in chapter 2 of the book of Hebrews.

    Chapter 2 in verses 1 through 3 we find the author warning against drifting. He says, 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? The threat in chapter 2 is led into by a warning against drifting away. Jesus spoken a parable of three kinds of soil that did not bear fruit from the seed of God’s Word which was planted in them, and one was a soil of thorns which choked out the growth of the Word to the point of unfruitfulness, and he explained the thorns as the cares of this life, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things.

    The point made in chapter 2 is that the roots of apostasy can start small. Even misplaced priorities can lead to dangerous desires down the road. But then the phrase to die without mercy in verse 28 we find this is most likely a reference to Deuteronomy chapter 13 verse 8 in which it says, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. And the context there is idolatry, its requisite capital punishment stoning to death without mercy. So in the law of Moses to engage in blatant idolatry, encourage others to do the same, which was tantamount to setting aside the law of Moses, the penalty was death. And then the author asks a question. He wants his readers to answer the question themselves, how much worse punishment is deserved?

    And he piles on the indictments. He says trampled underfoot the Son of God, whereas in Psalm 110 the Son of God himself tramples his enemies. He says that those who are rejecting have trampled underfoot the Son of God. Then he says profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified and insulted or blasphemed or outraged the spirit of grace. He doesn’t let his readers define or describe their own rebellion. He provides the indictment but invites his readers to consider the punishment that was due. And the author leaves the question hanging without answering it directly for maximal rhetorical effect. He’s seeking to grab their hearts to show them the seriousness of this. What our author has in this passage is not mere deliberate sinning, breaking of God’s commands, which warns God’s wrath all on its own.

    But what he describes here goes further. It rejects the system of doctrine and faith altogether. And this is what we call apostasy, rejecting the Christian faith that you once professed. And this is why the author of Hebrews especially describes it as profaning the blood of the covenant which was sanctified. Rather than regarding Christ’s blood as holy, as the thing that you must have to enter God’s presence, regarding it as common, worthless, as nothing. But this description is not an example of a saint chosen before the foundation of the world losing his election and justification. The Bible is clear that salvation in Christ is secure. Election cannot be revoked and justification is never reneged. But one can be part of the visible church, appearing to others to have faith by making a believable profession of faith, but never have truly been regenerated.

    The test of a genuine profession is not something that can be ascertained on the front end by intense questioning. Only time will tell whether a profession was genuine. As the faith of each person is tested by the fiery trials of life, it becomes clear that either it was genuine all along or it never really was. 1 John chapter 2 verse 19 gives us a diagnosis for understanding those that leave the covenant community, those that profane the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified. This is speaking of an outward visible sanctification which apparently never touched the heart. 1 John 2 19 says, the Antichrist went out from us. They were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out from us, that it might become plain that they are not of us.

    It’s the aftermath, the sticking power, the perseverance of faith that reveals whether it’s genuine. And verse 29, the phrase has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, not only speaks to the way that things appear from the human perspective, but also to the reality that entering the covenant community, becoming a member of the church means something. Even if one is never truly regenerated, entering into the church, becoming church membership entails greater blessings when one keeps it and greater indictments when one, if one is to reject it. Apostasy is a sin uniquely available to those that are a part of the visible church. Unbelievers who reject God all their lives cannot apostatize. They will go to hell for other sins, but not, but they cannot commit apostasy. They never joined the church and so they are not able to leave it.

    Today in our culture has become popular to refer to the serious sin of apostasy as merely deconstructing. People all over are deconstructing. They’re leaving their faith. The idea is that faith is simply each person’s personal structure of belief. And some people are just in a stage of tearing down their systems of thought that they used to believe that maybe they got from their parents or the church they were raised in. Like the enlightenment philosophers, these former believers are deconstructing their faith. They’re demolishing their beliefs in things like biblical inerrancy, Christ’s divinity, God’s sovereignty, and looking for something better, more stable to build their life on, which is of course a fool’s errand. Now while doubt is a common struggle within the Christian life and it should be treated with compassion when it arises, there’s a big difference between struggling with doubt and actively dismantling your system of belief.

    Doubt is a wavering conviction, but it presents a crossroads. Will the doubter seek out truth at the source and seek faith from God or will the doubter give up, convinced he already knows enough not to believe, enough to know that he doesn’t and won’t ever believe? The best way to discover the truth of God’s Word is to read it, not those claiming it is false. You have to go back to the source, the source of life. But mere doubt is not what the writer of Hebrews is concerned with at this point in the passage. He’ll address doubt next time in verses 35 to 39 and arguably all of chapter 11, the chapter on faith. But here in this passage he is concerned with the ugly fruit of doubt run wild to its fullest end, which is apostasy.

    The writer of Hebrews is hoping in this passage to ignite healthy fear in his readers so that if there are any on that path they will stop. But also that the other members will be motivated to pray and pursue those who are apostatizing, who are distancing, walking away from the faith and the church. They’ll be energized to pray, understanding the seriousness of what is in store for them. The writer would never want this warning to be taken as a warrant for merely throwing up our hands, since whatever will be will be. God’s Word always gives threats so that the certain outcome described might not happen to those that heed it and change. And the final description he gives is outraged the spirit of grace. The word outraged or insulted the spirit of grace is related to the word, the Greek word hubriso, from which we get our word hubris.

    This was a special form of pride in Greek culture which was attempting to overthrow or reject the gods themselves. And very likely some of that is in view here in this passage. Jesus warned the Pharisees against blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And the author of Hebrews seems to have something like that in view here with this outrage or insulting or blasphemy against the spirit of grace. Jesus warned the Jewish cities in which he preached. Sodom and Gomorrah would have a less severe punishment in the day of judgment than Capernaum and Bethsaida. He said that if Sodom and Gomorrah had received the warning that these Jewish towns received, they would have repented. And that is why the judgment on apostates is so harsh. They were fully warned of the judgment of God against sin and still turned their back on salvation.

    Apostasy represents an egregious offense to the entire three persons of the triune God. While God is not injured physically or emotionally or mentally in any way by this apostasy, nor is his self-esteem affected by the belittling efforts of creatures he made. Yet the offense is personally and objectively heinous, particularly heinous for those that had joined themselves to his church and then reject that faith. The smallest sin is such an offense to God’s holiness that it requires an eternity of damnation, but that does not mean that all sins are punished equally. And the writer suggests that to apostatize, to turn your back on such a great revelation, deserves a greater punishment. The personal offense of sin and apostasy, in particular, results in a personal judgment. This is number three, a personal judgment. As the writer moves through the passage, he stresses the personal nature of the offense as well as the personal nature of the judgment.

    Verse 29 is the offense. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who is trampled, underfoot the son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace? All sin is ultimately against God. David says in Psalm 51 verse 4, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. It sure looked like David had sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba and many others. Is David shifting blame, copping out, ignoring the other injured parties in his blatant disobedience? No. Of course, we start with the fact that as an inspired writer of God’s Word, David was speaking the truth in Psalm 51. But then we consider what it means.

    David hurt, even killed people, many people, with his dreadful affair and the attempted cover-up. But it was not Uriah’s law that David broke. David did not violate Bathsheba’s commandments. David broke God’s law. It was God who said, you shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. And Uriah and Bathsheba were collateral damage in David’s rebellion against God. God as the lawgiver and creator was the ultimate target of all of David’s sin. The writer of Hebrews is highlighting the personal nature of sin, especially apostasy, as targeting God. Sinners try to deceive themselves of the reality of their own sin. They even tell themselves that God doesn’t even see. Apostates might tell themselves, they’re just rejecting a bunch of baloney, a pack of lies, moving to a more enlightened, superior position. God doesn’t see it that way.

    In his view, this is trampling the Son of God, profaning the blood of the covenant and outraging the Spirit of grace. This personal offense of apostasy invokes a personal judgment from God. This is what we see in verses 30 and 31. For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The quote in verse 30 comes from Deuteronomy chapter 32, the Song of Moses, particularly verses 35 and 36, which is part of the long song that we read earlier in our service. We tend to be most familiar with the use of this quote by Paul in Romans chapter 12 verse 19, where Paul says, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

    In that case, Paul is urging Christians to show restraint, rest upon God’s vindication on their behalf. In Romans, it almost carries a comforting ring. But in Hebrews 10, it is used as a threat towards apostates. This use of the passage is drawn directly from its original context. God is speaking to Israel when he predicts, whom he predicts will rebel against him and incite him to judge them. As their God, the target of their rebellion, God asserts his exclusive right to bring proper retribution. The expectation after the delineation of the extremely offensive and personal nature of the offenses in Hebrews 10 is that the judgment will be unbearable. Rather than God letting his people off easy, he declares that his judgment upon his people is certain. And so for the apostates, having a former association with God, with God’s people, possessing greater knowledge of him and his ways is rather a liability than an advantage.

    Because as it says, the Lord will judge his people. There is a certain sense in which a greater scrutiny and judgment comes for those who are nominally part of the covenant community. As we close, we need to consider the bigger picture of this warning. The writer of Hebrews just came off a climax, reveling in the glory of Christ’s sacrifice for sins and the unbelievable access into God’s presence. And he urged those, urged encouragement for those who were drifting away, failing to meet together since the final judgment looms over this life and spells doom for those who reject God’s salvation in Christ. In our passage, we have seen the writer of Hebrews really drive home the terrifying prospect of judgment, which looms over a life of rebellion. Fear of hell alone is not enough to give someone a love for God, but we are told of God’s terrifying judgment for a reason.

    It is meant to give us a healthy fear. Sodom and Gomorrah were given no warning because their doom was already sealed. When God declares his judgment beforehand, like in our passage this evening, it is for the precise reason of giving his hearers an opportunity to avoid it. This is one of God’s sovereign predestined means of keeping his present and future saints on the path of life. By considering the terrifying alternative to salvation in Christ. As Mr. Beaver said about Aslan, he is not safe, but he is good. I talked through the book of Jonah at the Machen Science Camp two weeks ago for Bible lessons that week, and one of the things we talked about in the story of Jonah was the response of faith versus the response of unbelief. Jonah, when he was sinking down into the heart of the sea, suffering punishment from God for his running away, could have thrown up his hands, declaring his punishment was just.

    Instead, he called out to God for mercy, which he did not deserve. Similarly, the Ninevites could have responded to Jonah’s message of judgment, 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed by throwing up their hands. Whatever will be will be. God’s it’s up to him. He’s allowed to do what he wants to do. Judgment is coming, nothing we can do about it, but that would have been a response of unbelief. Instead, of course, they called out for mercy. Who knows? Cloaked sometimes in the language of humility, unbelief hears God’s judgment and either laughs it off in disbelief or also resigns itself to the inevitable reality. Faith, on the other hand, acknowledges God’s righteousness in bringing judgment, but pleads for mercy nonetheless. As the King of Nineveh said, who knows? God may have mercy. What the King of Nineveh did not know, we know far better.

    We know from the book of Hebrews alone, let alone the rest of the Bible, already the mercy available to those who seek it from God. We do not face an impersonal force of karma or the Greek fates of judgment. The judge of all the earth is a person and we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. We also know that he is the same one who sent his son to be the sacrifice for sins. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, but it is a comforting thing to cast yourself upon those hands for mercy in repentance and faith. And because of the sacrifice for sins by the Son of God, who sanctified us by his blood and gave us the spirit of grace, we can have absolute confidence we can have absolute confidence that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord for mercy will be saved.

    Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for giving us your word, even this warning of judgment. Lord, we ask that we would hear your judgment and we would take it to heart. We would live our lives in the light of the alternative to salvation in Christ, that we would live in holy, righteous fear, godly fear that would drive us to repentance and faith, greater faith in your mercy, greater faith in your mercy, greater appreciation of your salvation for us. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. On response, let’s stand and sing hymn 387, hymn 387, Day of Judgment, Day of Wonders, 387.

    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 New and Living Way to Live

    The New and Living Way to Live

    About this sermon

    Because believers have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, through the new and living way he opened through the curtain of his flesh, Hebrews calls them to draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, hearts sprinkled clean and bodies washed with pure water. Baptism signifies and seals that inner cleansing. They are to hold fast the confession of their hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. They must also consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, meeting together and encouraging one another as the day draws near.

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Well, if you would turn in your Bibles, this evening we are looking at the book of Hebrews and we’ll be reading verses 19 through 25. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 through 25. This is the Word of God. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with 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 stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

    Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for giving us your spirit, for sending your spirit forth into the world, for giving your spirit the task of inspiring your word, breathing that out through the pens of men throughout the ages. And we thank you for preserving that word. And now for giving us that word tonight. We ask that that same spirit which wrote these words down and preserve them for our reading might be present so that we might read them and have life, that we might hear them and have the work of your spirit to open our eyes, the eyes of our hearts, our ears, that we might believe, that we might treasure, we might be changed by your word. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen. You may be seated. Have you ever had fresh produce straight from the garden?

    I know we’ve got quite a number of gardeners here who not only eat their own produce, but generously provide it to others. It is my firm belief that people who claim to not like vegetables have never truly had them fresh. Once you’ve had a fresh, ripe heritage tomato right off the vine, sweet corn right off the stalk, or maybe sweet peas off the vine, kale and lettuce still wet with the dew in the morning, fresh dug potatoes, and all the rest. I don’t see how one could not like vegetables. Fruits are the same way. Strawberries just aren’t the same when they have to ship them from Mexico to be picked up at Walmart. But blueberries, I notice the starkest difference. They’ve always got a special sweetness and nuance of flavor that I’ve only found when I’m picking them off the bush.

    So I always try to eat as much as I can whenever I’m picking them. Tonight we’re talking about the new and living way that Jesus inaugurated. He gives us new and living access to God that was simply unavailable in the Old Testament. Well, on the one hand, it’s not fundamentally different since the Old Testament sacrifices were looking forward to Christ’s sacrifice. On the other hand, there’s something different about it now, now that Christ has come. Now this passage that we’re looking at this evening is probably the key passage of the entire book of Hebrews. Someone asks you, what is the message of the book of Hebrews in a nutshell? Certainly you could say Jesus is superior, but I would say that this passage is it. You would want to take them to this passage, Hebrews 10, 19 through 25.

    Everything that the author has been saying up to this point is summarized and climaxed in this passage. And everything he will continue to say is unpacking what he summarized here. Jesus Christ has created and is himself a fresh and alive way to boldly access God, hold fast to faith, and to do so together as a believing community. I will see this under three headings this evening. Number one, the new and living way to enter God’s presence. Number two, to endure without wavering. And number three, the new and living way to encourage each other. Number one, the new and living way to enter God’s presence. We see this in verses 19 through 22. Verses 19-20, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.

    The writer is about to issue an exhortation telling his readers to do something, but he prefaces it with this, And once again we see the writer identifying with his readers. We have confidence. The writer is identifying with his audience including himself in those that have a shared possession. This possession is confidence to enter the holy places. In Hebrews chapter four, verse 16, the writer exhorted his readers to be emboldened. He said, let us then draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. But now in chapter 10, he’s no longer exhorting his readers to apprehend confidence. He is assuring them that they have it. In chapter four, he had only barely begun to explain the reasons to have confidence. He said that based on the single fact of our sinless and sympathetic high priest, we ought to be able to come with boldness to the throne of grace.

    And yet in chapter 4, the idea could be pictured of merely being bold in bringing our requests to priest Jesus. We could have assurance of a listening ear knowing he is sitting at the right hand of God. while being intimately and experientially acquainted with our frailty and failures, without having fallen prey to them himself. But in chapter 10, we find that the previous picture eclipsed, but that previous picture eclipsed because we are given access beyond what any high priest, according to the order of Aaron, ever dreamed of. The Aaronic high priest did enter the holy places, But they were earthly holy places, and they were only once a year, and it was always with trembling. The multitude of warnings against being struck dead would have inevitably struck fear into the heart of Aaron and all his successors.

    No high priest in the Old Testament ever dreamed of entering the holy places with confidence. Yet here, the writer of Hebrews is not exhorting his readers to aspire to this, but to be assured that this is precisely what they already possess. This is reminiscent of the progression that we find in Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John to his disciples in the upper room the night before his death. In chapter 14 of John’s Gospel, we find Jesus assuring his disciples that he will take their request to the Father. John chapter 14, verses 13 and 14. He says, whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. And verse 16, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever.

    But as the night progresses and Jesus continues talking, he goes even further in John chapter 16, two chapters later. John 16, 23 and 24, Jesus says, in that day, you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now, you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, and your joy will be full. Jesus is not trying to pit himself and the Father against one another in the slightest. Instead, he’s stressing their unity, but he’s highlighting the intimacy available to his disciples because of their connection to him. As those that are in Christ, the disciples possess the same access to the Father that Jesus himself has. When they come in Jesus’ name, they come with his access.

    The author of Hebrews is telling his readers that we have confidence to enter the holy places through the blood of Jesus. The previous priests entered the holy places with trembling and trepidation but those who have Christ’s blood sprinkling them walk boldly where even high priests feared to tread. This is something new. Now the writer of Hebrews has been talking about the new covenant, so we’re not entirely surprised to see him describe the access to the holy places in Christ as new. But while the word in English is the same word, in Greek there’s a slight nuance that is present in this word choice. Instead of kainos, which is the word he uses elsewhere for new, the normal Greek word for new, he uses a more obscure term, prosphateros. This is the only occurrence of this word in the New Testament, but it does show up in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

    It’s a word that means new, but it carries the connotation of fresh. When used of food, it is in contrast to stale. We find it in Numbers 6, verse 3, distinguishing between fresh and dried grapes. Fresh grapes. Or in Ecclesiastes 1.9, famously, the author complains that there is nothing fresh under the sun. It all seems stale, like it’s been seen before. But here the writer of Hebrews is describing the way into the holy places that has been opened through Christ as fresh, new. This word carries the connotation of experientially fresh. The access to God that Jesus makes possible feels different. It is alive and fresh. In this new and living way that has been opened, the least believer who is united to Christ has greater and more intimate access to God than the greatest high priest under the Old Covenant.

    Now as we move through our passage, verse 20 says that he opened it through the curtain of his flesh. by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, verse 20. It can be tricky to pin down exactly what is meant by Jesus’ flesh. Flesh is a word used in multiple ways throughout the New Testament across various writers. Flesh and bone, flesh means a physical body. But when flesh and spirit are contrasted, it doesn’t mean physical versus spiritual, Rather, flesh versus spirit refers to the sinful nature, flesh, in contrast with that which comes from the Holy Spirit. But neither of those definitions seem to quite fit what’s going on here in our passage. It’s not Jesus’ physicality itself that gives us confident access to God’s presence.

    It was also clearly not Jesus’ sinful nature either, since he certainly didn’t have one. Instead, what seems to be in view here by Jesus’ flesh is his weakness. Now this does include his physical form, but it is his veiling of his glory, taking on the role of a humble servant. And this is the usage that we saw in Hebrews chapter 5. Hebrews chapter 5 verse 7. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. To him it was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. The term, in the days of his flesh, in Hebrews 5, 7, the author of Hebrews cannot mean Jesus’ human nature. Because Jesus has not shed his human nature. He still has it. He still possesses his human nature in heaven.

    So the author of Hebrews instead is referring to Jesus’ period of weakness called in the shorter catechism his humiliation as opposed to his exaltation. So Jesus’ flesh that opened the way for us to have confident access to the holy places was his period of humiliation, his time of taking the form of a servant and obediently suffering death, death on a cross. Yet despite possessing fresh and living access that we do, we have not eliminated our superior High Priest, as we see in verses 21 and 22. The author goes on, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Rather, our high priest’s past and present ministry is what provides us with the boldness in the first place.

    In fact, Jesus leads the way. Jesus is not merely holding the door open, telling us to go on in ahead of him. We are following him as he leads the way and is the way into the presence of God. Jesus, our High Priest, has given us a true heart that has true faith, since it has been cleansed from sin. as represented with the cleansing water of baptism. The body is sprinkled clean with water, but this merely signifies and seals the inner cleansing which must take place for new life to begin. Jesus’ high priestly ministry provides truly effective cleansing from sin. which finally gives the beneficiaries of his work not just access to God, but bold access into God’s most intimate presence. This fresh and living confidence that we possess then gives us a new way to hold on to our confession of hope.

    Number two, the new and living way to endure without wavering. And this is in verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. This exhortation to hold fast our confession is not new in the book of Hebrews. We saw a very similar exhortation earlier in chapter 3, verse 6, and we are his house. If indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope, In chapter 3, the author speaks with contingency. If we hold fast, then we are Christ’s house. The tone is more ominous in chapter 3, and even more so when we see it repeated in verse 14 of chapter 3. For we have come to share in Christ if, indeed, we hold our original confidence firm to the end. The common point made in chapter 3 is that enduring confidence, steadfast holding on to the hope found in Christ, proves that the faith of the beginning was real.

    One of the precious teachings within Reformed theology, sourced from passages like these, is the doctrine of the perseverance or the preservation of the saints. Perseverance is how we speak of it from our perspective, but preservation is how we speak of it from God’s perspective. God preserves us in perseverance. God’s preservation results in our perseverance through sometimes unimaginable difficulties. But any saint that has gone through such trials and come out the other side will testify that it has not been so much their strength, but God’s power that preserved them. Mysteriously and wonderfully, God preserves his saints by keeping their faith fixed upon him and his faithfulness, even when they feel their own strength slipping. In chapter 10, the exhortation to hold fast our confidence is not given in terms of a condition of being a part of Christ or his house, but it is reiterated in light of what Christ has brought about.

    Instead of being reminded that perseverance is confirmation of our genuineness, the author points to the demonstrated faithfulness of the object of our hope to instill confidence. for he who promised is faithful. He has just assured his readers that they have bold access by virtue of being beneficiaries of Christ’s high priestly work. Now he is exhorting them to exercise this confidence like a muscle. The phrase without wavering comes from a single Greek word that is related to the Greek words for sitting or lying down or in terms of a day declining The word is aklinas, which means to not decline, to not fade, to not lessen. The author is urging his readers to make frequent use of their access to God, granted by Christ, so that it won’t decline or waver the way a muscle will atrophy without regular exercise.

    I find this to be the case in my own life. The less I pray, The less I am inclined to pray, the more timid I become in prayer. The bold access which objectively belongs to a believer can be lost subjectively if it is neglected. Nothing will have changed in terms of my standing before God, but my own neglect of prayer in my life results in me feeling more distant from God. I’m more inclined to ask for smaller requests Instead of feeling like God is my Heavenly Father, who is eager to hear and answer my prayers, I tend to start thinking of God as distant and cold. I think of Him as not as interested in my petty concerns. He’s not worth bothering about my daily troubles. When I have a lack of prayer, I also start to think that maybe I don’t need God for the most things in my life after all.

    God is someone for me to contact for the really big, serious health stuff, but he becomes a place of last resort, not daily confidence and intimacy. Have you ever found yourself trying to pray for help, but really doubting whether God actually cares about your need or whether he’ll do anything? You’re ready to admit that he’s able to do anything he wants, but you’re kind of doubtful that he’s likely to help you. Your confidence in prayer is wavering. The writer of Hebrews is trying to prevent that from happening. And he does it in two ways. He starts out assuring you that your access to God is truly unparalleled. What you have in prayer as a believer in Christ is beyond what the Old Testament high priest could ever dream of. And then he follows this up with assurance, follows this assurance up with an urging to make frequent use of this access.

    Instead of frequent use diminishing its effectiveness, our bold access is like a muscle that only gets stronger with youth. Here in our passage, in chapter 10, verse 23, we have hope linked with confession. Now the Apostle Peter famously tells us in 1 Peter 3.15 to always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. The first readers of the letter to the Hebrews were likely under particular pressure to not confess their hope. Speaking of their hope openly might make them the object of persecution. But the author of Hebrews tells them to not just hold on to the hope itself without wavering, but hold on their confession of hope. Use your words. Be ready to give an answer, an explanation, a confession of your hope.

    Don’t keep it private to see if people can guess. Exercise the boldness that you possess in entering God’s presence by holding fast to the confession of your hope. We often call our recitation of the Nicene or Apostle’s creeds as a confession of faith. What is often meant by faith in that instance is the way that the Apostle Paul uses faith. For instance, in his letter to Timothy, meaning a body of teaching. But we would be right to consider it also as a confession of faith in terms of hope. While much of what we recite in the creeds is something that has already happened, not all of it is looking backwards. Consider especially the words, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. Christians are those who hold fast to the belief, the assurance, that despite what the critics, our emotions, or anything around us might suggest, Jesus really is coming back.

    Just as surely as we hold fast to the assurance that He came and died and rose again, He is coming again. We confess together our hope that Christ really will return, sooner or later, just as He promised. Judgment day is coming, and so is the consummation of redemption. But the writer of Hebrews is under no delusions that holding fast to hope it would be best maintained by a just me and Jesus situation. It’s meant to be strengthened and maintained in community. And so he moves on to describe the new and living way to encourage each other. Number three. And this is found in verse 24 and 25. and let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

    In contrast to much of the New Testament, the book of Hebrews is especially full of let us or we ought exhortations. The author regularly includes himself with the audience as equally in need of heeding the warnings and encouragements that he gives. In this way, he is modeling what he describes in this verse. He has himself been considering how to stir up his readers to love and good works, so that they will hold steadfastly to the confession of our hope. That’s what prompted him to write this letter. But he knows it’s not enough for him to do it alone. He wants to turn his whole audience into those who are keeping an eye out for each other spiritually and brainstorming about how to encouragingly hold each other accountable. Now, I’ve seen this done in an unhealthy way.

    I’ve seen churches which are so much in each other’s business that there’s no room to breathe. The main problem is that there’s not a spirit of grace that allows others to fail without jumping down their throat for every single mistake. In the name of keeping each other accountable, sometimes congregations can develop a culture of perfectionism. Instead of attempting to graciously keep an eye out for those around who may need encouragement, there becomes a spirit of correcting every mistake that is spotted. Since no one is perfect all the time under a microscope, a culture of perfectionism usually breeds hypocrites, like it did in Israel with the Pharisees. There will be people who are able to play the game better than others and can keep up with doing the right things longer and more consistently that matter to the people checking everyone else.

    But that’s not what the writer of Hebrews is envisioning here. He’s not calling for a culture of merely pointing out failures. It can be relatively easy to point out failures in others. Jesus famously compared it to a comically sad scenario in which a person with an enormous log protruding from his eye is attempting to remove a splinter from his brother’s eye. A real recipe for disaster. Although I think his real point in that example was to tell us what the attitude we ought to have when addressing criticism. We’re in the best place to lovingly correct a brother or sister when we view our own sin as a bigger deal than the fault that we’re pointing out in them. The author of Hebrews says that what he is calling for is something that requires creative thinking.

    It doesn’t usually require much thought to notice somebody messed up. It takes much more thought to know how to come alongside and bring gentle encouragement. The author of Hebrews is offering us an example right here in this passage. There’s obviously a problem that he’s aware of amongst his audience. Some of the congregation are skipping corporate worship quite a bit. This is concerning. The OPC as a denomination has placed a high priority on corporate worship because it understands that neglecting regular worship is often either a symptom or a cause of spiritual anemia or both. Now there are many reasons that people stop gathering with saints for worship. Some people have been hurt very deeply by people within churches. But a me and Jesus Christianity that avoids regular close contact with the body of believers is also avoiding the challenge of exercising love and obedience to those imperfect believers.

    Like a muscle that never gets exercised, a Christian who isolates from challenges that inevitably come from interacting with imperfect, even though redeemed, people will find their love, even for God, atrophied. First John 420 puts it as simply as possible. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. The world today is full of people who are convinced that they are loving people. Some admit their dislike or even hatred of humans, but profess a deep love for animals. It is quickly obvious to an outsider that these people do not really understand love. They love creatures which have little to no capacity to hurt them or make themselves difficult to be loved.

    Animals are a popular object of love because they express no judgment or expectations. They don’t possess questionable intentions or motivations. People, on the other hand, make it difficult to love them in all kinds of ways. But just as it is obvious that the animal lover who hates people has a deficient understanding of love, so it is with those that maintain they possess a love for God while refusing to join themselves to his church. Yet, the author of Hebrews doesn’t bring down the hammer of judgment on those who are on a dangerous path of neglecting regular corporate worship, consistently distancing themselves from the body of believers. Instead, he urges his readers to think creatively with him, not on how to rebuke and criticize those who aren’t up to snuff, but how to encourage them, to stir them up, that will require first listening to understand what’s really going on.

    There are all kinds of legitimate reasons that might be hindering a person from regular worship, gathering with God’s people. And most often, they need encouragement or help. But even if they do need a stern rebuke, that will become clear after you’ve understood the situation more fully. There is a place for calling people out. But the gospel, which is God’s power, the power of God for salvation, it’s not merely bad news, but good news. If the power of God for salvation is encapsulated in a message of good news, we should try to model that same approach in our efforts to stir each other up to love and good works. As we’ll see next time in the next few verses, The author does not soft-pedal the reality of judgment, but he doesn’t begin with it. He opens his discussion with a glorious encouragement for believers to exercise the access to God that they possess.

    As part of exercising that confidence to keep it strong, he urges his readers to stay involved in corporate worship and creatively consider how they can encourage any stragglers, especially, to keep gathering with God’s people. And verse 25, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. As time passes, corporate worship is not less important, but increasingly important. So the author adds the final incentive, our hopeful expectation of the imminent return of Christ. Although the means to retrieve stragglers is gentle and creative, the stakes are not small. Judgment day is coming and we don’t want anyone to be unprepared or to find themselves cut off from Christ after cutting themselves off from his church. So we pursue with grave concern. but with a graceful demeanor of encouragement, making use of the bold access to God that we now possess as the beneficiaries of Christ’s precious work.

    Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we are amazed at what your word says, that we should be given such access to walk boldly where the high priests came with trembling. But we know it is by the work of your son Jesus Christ, the one who has not just our Lord, but has called himself our brother, who is our high priest, purchased our lives by his blood. and welcomes us in, in his name, to call you our father with bold access. Lord, we ask that you would give us your spirit, that we might have the wisdom and grace and gentleness that we need to be those that encourage one another, that we care enough to encourage, to warn, We are wise enough and gentle enough to do it in a way that brings them back, does not distance them further.

    Lord, we ask for your spirit in this. We need your help and your wisdom. And we pray for it in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, let’s turn now to sing hymn number 404, The Church’s One Foundation. And let’s stand as we sing number 404.

    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 God Wants

    What God Wants

    About this sermon

    Hebrews 10 teaches that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins; the yearly sacrifices only reminded worshipers of them. When Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me… I have come to do your will, O God.” God wants obedient hearts, which Christ supplied by offering his body once for all. By that will God sanctifies believers, making them holy so they can have fellowship with God. Christ obeyed not so that his people need not, but to enable them to do God’s will too.

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    Sermon transcript

    If you would remain standing and turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10, we’ll be reading verses 1 through 18, looking at that as our passage this morning for our sermon. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 through 18. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshippers having once been cleansed would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.

    In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. When he said you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and burnt offerings and sin offerings, these are offered according to the law. Then he added, Behold, I have come to do your will. He does away with the first in order to establish the second, and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

    For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us. For after saying, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. And then let’s pray. Lord in heaven, we ask that you would send your Holy Spirit these living words that sit before us that we have heard, we have written down, would merely be death to us if we do not have your powerful Spirit working in our hearts and minds to give us the light of the knowledge of Christ.

    So Lord, we ask that your Spirit would be present in the proclamation and in the hearing and in the believing. Lord, we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen, may we be seated. But why didn’t you obey me? This is the question that little Callie Cleary, future English, found herself being asked repeatedly in middle school by her mom, especially in terms of being picked up after dance and soccer practice. No matter how firm the deadline, how specific the time, set beforehand of where to be and when, other things took priority. It wasn’t that they were bad things. Most often it was different forms of ministry. This friend needed a listening ear, but that friend really needed to be evangelized to. And all other commitments were immediately unimportant. I’m glad you’re trying to minister to your friends at school, but that’s no sanction for disobedience, her mom told her.

    I’m your mother and what I want is for you to obey me. You don’t get to independently determine that my commands are suddenly less important than whatever good thing you want to do in the moment. Despite these instructions, middle school Callie continued to struggle to stick to her prior parental instructions. Until she came across the story of the famous president, Abraham Lincoln, from his own childhood. In the story, young Abe went out to the woods with his older sister to try out his new ax on the forest trees. His father had told Abe to look behind him before every swing and only choose a certain species of soft-wooded tree for his first felling. In his excitement and overconfidence, Abe failed to choose the correct tree and to look behind him after his first few swings and inadvertently cut his sister’s leg quite deeply.

    In a courageous effort to save his sister, he quickly picked her up and ran barefooted the several miles back to the house. The doctor, when he got there, told Abe that his courage and strength to bring his sister back so quickly had definitely saved her leg and possibly her life. But all Abe could think about was the fact that if it weren’t for his disobedience, his sister wouldn’t be in that position in the first place. For him, it became a lesson that he took into adulthood. For the young Callie, reading about this herself, it became a turning point as well. Observing the devastating consequences of disobedience in Abe’s life helped middle school and later high school Callie to prioritize her own obedience to her mother’s commands, to be at the car for pickup after school at the right time.

    Our passage this morning is talking about obedience and sacrifices. The sacrifices were needed because obedience hadn’t happened and it wasn’t happening. But both were lacking in the Old Testament sacrificial system. Something better, or rather someone better, had to come and fix both. This morning we’re looking at the first half of Hebrews chapter 10 and we’ll consider three things that God wants. Number one is obedient sacrifice. Number two, God wants sacrificial obedience. Number three, God wants sanctified fellowship. Number one, obedient sacrifice. Look at verse one, for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near. Up to this point, the author of Hebrews has mentioned various aspects of the Old Testament worship, which he said were shadowy sketches, which were effective at pointing ahead to Christ, but were quite ineffective at eradicating sin or achieving atonement.

    He mentioned the tabernacle and the sacrifices in chapters eight and nine. But in chapter 10, he turns his attention to the law. He’s already mentioned the law in chapter seven in regard to the priesthood. The law-appointed priests of Aaronic descent from the tribe of Levi have been superseded by the Melchizedekian priest-king who was individually appointed by God’s direct oath. This carries an implication for the law. In chapter seven, verse 12, the author says, for when there is a change in the priesthood, there’s a change in the law as well. The author of Hebrews dismisses the law further in verse 18 of chapter seven. He says, for on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness, for the law made nothing perfect. And we see a return to the ineffectiveness of the law as we begin chapter 10.

    In chapter seven, the criticisms were leveled at the priesthood. But in chapter 10, the sacrifices themselves are the target. The change in the law became clear at the change in the priesthood. It’s revealed to impact the sacrifices as well in our passage. We don’t just need a sinless, indestructible high priest who is also a king to offer our sacrifices. We also need him to offer the sacrifices in the heavenly tabernacle, namely God’s very presence. But we don’t just need a better priest and a better tabernacle. We also need a better sacrifice. The law made provisions for, quote, the same sacrifices that are offered every year. The writer of Hebrews says right there, that ought to have been a clue. They weren’t actually doing the job. Look at verses two through four. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins.

    But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of goats and bulls and goats to take away sins. If you ever have had to call a plumber or electrician or an HVAC contractor, you wouldn’t consider it a successful visit if you had to keep calling him back to fix the same issue over and over again. When you’ve called the same guy to fix the problem multiple times, it’s not his ability that you’re assured of. Usually, by the second time, you’re looking for a new technician. The writer of Hebrews is saying the repetition which was baked into the Old Testament sacrifices was not a sign that they were fixing the problem. It was meant to signify their insufficiency. And he’s saying that to a certain extent, the sacrifices which were representing the cleansing of the people ought to have reminded the people just as much of their ongoing sinfulness.

    But don’t let this critique by the author of Hebrews make you think that no one in the Old Testament ever realized this. The Psalms and prophetic books are full of references to the inadequacy of sacrifices, even if it wasn’t fully clear what God’s final solution would be. The author of Hebrews portrays Christ as quoting Psalm 40 to make his point, verses five and six. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure. Here’s one of the many hints in the Old Testament that the sacrificial system was ultimately not able to take care, complete the job of taking care of sin. The inspired psalmist says that ultimately the sacrifices God instituted weren’t fully pleasing to him.

    And the writer of Hebrews emphasizes this in verse eight. When he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings, then he adds, these are offered according to the law. Sandwiched in between statements about God’s displeasure with sacrifices, we find the phrase a body you have prepared for me. What may have been obscure to an earlier audience is clear when looking back from our vantage point as a reference to Christ. The problem with the sacrifices was that they weren’t human. One of the reasons that the previous sacrifices were insufficient is that they were not human. It was not animals who sinned, it was man. Yet day after day, month after month, year after year, animals were killed as a substitute for sinful men and women.

    This would never do. Now on the one hand, God explicitly forbade human sacrifice and repeatedly reminded Israel how much their infant sacrifices to foreign gods disgusted him. But on the other hand, it wasn’t animals who sinned. Animals are not made in God’s image. They’re not held morally responsible for their thoughts and intentions the way that humans are. Only a human could truly be substituted for another human. Humans have sinned and their atonement must involve a human substitute. But additionally, animals lacked the ability and responsibility for their willing actions. The substitutionary sacrifice must also be voluntary. Look at verse 7 of Hebrews 10. And I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. In the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis viewed this as a central element of the atonement.

    His character, Aslan, upon his resurrection after being sacrificed the night before, explains his actions like this, quote, It means, said Aslan, that though the witch knew the deep magic, there is a deeper magic still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes only back to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a trader’s stead, the table would crack and death itself would start working backwards. Jesus made very clear throughout his ministry that his death was intentional and a purposeful part of his mission. You can look at John chapter 10, verses 17 through 18. In John chapter 10, Jesus goes out of his way to make clear that his death is by his own design.

    John 10, verse 17, For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again, and this charge I have received from my Father. No bull, goat, lamb, or dove were asked for their sacrificial cooperation. But not so with Christ. He laid his life down. There was no coercion involved. The one sacrifice that was effectual was performed by a willing victim, a sinless man willingly dying in the place of sinful men and women. Christ’s death was a voluntary sacrifice on his part, but it was an act of obedience towards God as well, which leads us to consider the second thing that God wants.

    Number two, sacrificial obedience. We see this in verses 7 through 9. Verse 7, Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. And he said, Above you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings, and burnt offerings and sin offerings. These are offered according to the law. Then he added, Behold, I have come to do your will. Christ was given a body for the purpose of doing God’s will, of obedience. As God, Christ owes no one anything. He answers to no one. So he became man, taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul in order to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law. Christ became a man in order to offer to God true obedience as the only being, God, who didn’t owe God anything.

    All throughout the gospels, from Jesus’ birth to his death and his resurrection, there’s a constant refrain as it was written. This is not an unconscious fulfillment of prophecy about Jesus’ life either. Jesus repeatedly tells those around him of the necessity of his fulfilling these prophecies concerning himself and his ministry. From the time that John the Baptist tries to refuse baptizing him and Jesus tells him, Let it be, for it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness, to the devil tempting him, to the disciples trying to dissuade him from going to the cross, as Jesus told them, it is necessary that the Son of Man suffer as it was written. Jesus faced opposition to his self-conscious obedience everywhere, yet he never wavered. God was displeased with the sacrifices he instituted because they only pictured cleansing from sin without ever effectuating it fully.

    In order for a sacrifice to be effectual, it had to be offered by the right person, in the right place, and most importantly, it had to be the right sacrifice. For the blood to cleanse, it had to be the right blood. And we’ve seen how Christ is the right priest to offer the sacrifice. How he’s in the right place, the heavenly tabernacle, aka God’s presence. Now we’re looking at how he is the right sacrifice. The animal sacrifices had to be a spotless animal because what they were picturing was that the sacrifice needed to be sinless. This means the only man suitable as a sacrifice was a sinless one. He had to be perfectly obedient all of his life. But a perfectly obedient, sinless man could only earn life for himself under God’s conditions with the first man, Adam.

    In order to provide life to another sinner, this sinless man would have to positively keep all of God’s commands and then negatively submit to the final obedience required by the sinner, which was death, to pay the penalty obediently for his own sin. For both of these things, Christ needed a human body. He needed to obey positively in all the ways that only a human could. We’ve already seen the writer of Hebrews emphasizing Christ’s full humanity repeatedly. And he was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. You and I regularly fall to temptation. Sometimes we even run headlong into temptation, letting it lead us down familiar paths, resentment, self-pity, pride, lust, self-centeredness, lying, anger, and all the rest. But Christ repeatedly resisted time after time after time. Every time the temptation was presented by Satan, Christ firmly rejected it.

    He was always, every minute of every day of every week of every year, acting, thinking, and speaking in accordance with God’s will. Now you will sometimes hear theologians or read in books or in our own denominational standards, language of Christ’s obedience in two categories, Christ’s active obedience and Christ’s passive obedience. Now these two terms can be confusing if you don’t know where they come from. In this case, active doesn’t mean what Christ actively did to obey God, and passive doesn’t mean what he didn’t do to disobey God. In this case, passive comes from the term passion, which means suffering. You may have heard of the passion of Christ. This doesn’t refer to his emotions or his zeal, it has to do with his suffering, particularly centered on what he suffered on the cross. So Christ’s active obedience is the way that he lived his life at all times and always in accordance with the will of God.

    This is what we, as sinners, need positively in order to be viewed by God as righteous. You will sometimes hear the term double imputation in terms of Christ and his righteousness, and that refers to the fact that not only is our sin imputed, counted to Christ’s account, in order for him to receive the punishment that we deserve, but also his righteousness, his active obedience, is counted to our account so that God rewards us with life that Christ deserves. Christ’s passive obedience is his willingness to undergo the suffering, death, and judgment of God for sinners on the cross. Jesus told his disciples in John 14, verse 31, that his death was an act of obedient love for his Father. He said, I do as the Father has commanded me, that the world may know that I love the Father.

    Christ’s willingness to do God’s will, his complete obedience, both active and passive, come together in our salvation. Verse 10, and by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Christ’s body, his willing, human, sinless body, was what God wanted. Only the body of Christ was sufficient to cleanse sinners from sin. This idea is reiterated in verse 14 of our passage, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. So what Christ accomplishes through the offering of his body once and for all is intimacy with God, which leads us to the third thing that God wants, which is sanctified fellowship. Sanctification in the book of Hebrews is less about progressive improvement of character, what we might call progressive sanctification, but rather consecrated godlikeness, which happens the moment of our salvation facilitates our intimacy with God.

    Back in chapter 2 verse 11, he ties it to our brotherhood. He said, for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. And then if we look ahead in chapter 12 verse 14, Hebrews says, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness or sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. The author of Hebrews is not as focused on the progressive aspect of sanctification that other parts of scripture highlight. And while it is true that Christ is perfected for all time, justification, those who are progressively conformed more and more to the image of his son, the progressive sanctification that we often speak of, the author of Hebrews has a slightly different point in view. His point is not that it’s incomplete, but that it is ongoing.

    For instance, in chapter 12 verse 10, he says he disciplines for our good that we may share in his holiness. Holiness or sanctification, being sanctified, is a state of being holy, which allows for intimate fellowship with God. God is holy, so in order to have fellowship with God, we must share in his holiness. But that holiness is not divorced from obedience, in fact it produces obedience. Now Christ did not come with a human body to do God’s will in order that we wouldn’t have to, but rather to enable us to do God’s will as well. When I’m sharing the gospel with strangers, especially on the boardwalk, I often explain it in terms of three problems. You have a rebellious heart that’s like a cobra. You have a filthy past that’s like manure and you have a poisonous life.

    In order to help people understand how this impacts their relationship with God, I ask them, would you like to have a cobra running around in your house? Would you like me to track manure from my shoes all over your bedroom? Would you like me to put even one drop of poison in your food or drink? Now you can begin to understand why God does not want you in his kingdom the way that you are. This is important because it highlights our need for total transformation. We’re not just good people that need a few things expunged from our record in the past. Our problem starts in our heart. There was only one man who said, behold, I have come to do your will, oh God. And if we’re to have any hope at all, we need deep heart change.

    Verse 1 in chapter 10 says, for since the law is but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near. The law was limited in power. It could only condemn the guilty. It couldn’t produce that obedience that was required. The old law couldn’t bring perfection because it came with shadowy sacrifices, but Christ is the true form of those realities that the law pointed to. Only Christ’s obedience is able to both satisfy the requirement for our cleansing from sin and produce whole person transformation. Christ’s obedience doesn’t make our obedience unnecessary. It makes it possible. And this is what we see in verses 15 to 18. The Holy Spirit also bears witness to us, for after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.

    And then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. The new covenant that Christ mediates, effectuates the implantation of God’s will onto the hearts and minds of his people. Obedience for them starts coming from the heart, not merely from external threats of condemnation. And in verse 14 it says, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. The wording being sanctified might at first have prompted thoughts of progressing sanctification, which wouldn’t be wrong in general, but I think the author’s real focus is that our sanctified fellowship with God is an ongoing reality. It’s in the present tense in the Greek. That’s what they’re trying to get across with the word being sanctified.

    It’s not a past reality, but an ongoing present reality. Rather than stressing that a once for all offering for sin creates a progression of improvement, which it does, the author is instead stressing this new reality in which we are cleansed from sin produces ongoing, holy fellowship with a holy God. The animal sacrifices reminded the people day after day, year after year, the debt wasn’t paid, sin hadn’t been fully atoned for, payment was postponed but not completed. But Christ’s final, once for all, perfect sacrifice offered by the perfect priest himself in the perfect place, God’s presence, brings sanctifying forgiveness for the purpose of holy fellowship with God forever. On January 1, 1937, J. Gresham Machen, the founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church who was quite ill and near death, dictated his final words in a telegram to his colleagues John Murray at Westminster, I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ.

    No hope without it. In Christ’s passive obedience we find our punishment removed and in his active obedience we find ourselves heirs of eternal life and blessed fellowship with God forever. Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that there was one who had come to do your will, that you gave him a body, a fully human body that he might fulfill all the requirements of your law, even the cursed death that we deserve and the perfect active obedience to give us eternal life. We thank you for the obedience of Christ and the way that that empowers and enables us to also live now through Christ in a way that pleases you as well. We thank you for this in Jesus’ name, amen. Well in response let’s turn to hymn 436, my faith has found a resting place.

    Let’s stand and sing number 436.

    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.

  • Without the Shedding of Blood

    Without the Shedding of Blood

    About this sermon

    1. Cutting a (v15).
    2. Diatheke: A “Will” or a “Covenant”? (v16-17).
    “16For where there is a covenant, it is necessary that the death
    of the one making it be represented. 17For a covenant is made
    legally firm on the basis of dead victims, since it is not valid
    while the one making it is alive.” (Sigurd Grindheim)
    “16For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be
    established. 17For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force
    as long as the one who made it is alive.” (ESV)
    “For where there is a covenant, it is necessary that the death of the one making it be represented (by sacrifice, in order to demonstrate the curse under which they are placing themselves if they break the covenant). For a covenant is made legally firm on the basis of (a ritual involving) dead victims, since it is not valid while the one making it is alive (that is, unless one’s death is legally represented by the sacrificial animals.” (The Letter to the Hebrews, Sigurd Grindheim)
    3. Bloodshed: Convicting or ? (v18-22).

    More sermons from Hebrews · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Well, if you’ll remain standing and turn now to our sermon text for this evening is taken from the book of Hebrews, Chapter 9. We’ll be looking this evening at verses 15 through 22. Hebrews, Chapter 9, verses 15 through 22. Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not enforced as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

    And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Amen. May God add his blessing to the reading of this word. Let’s pray. Our Father in Heaven, we ask that the same Spirit that has inspired the writing of this word, has preserved it throughout the time that we have it even now before us this evening. That same Spirit would be powerfully at work in us as we hear, and in the preaching as well, that you might be honored and glorified, that your people might be fed. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. You may be seated. Now if you don’t have an outline for this evening, we normally provide them, and there are still some on the back table, which you may want before we are done.

    This text is a little bit complicated in one of the points. Have you ever signed your name in blood? If you were a teenage boy at one point, you probably at least thought about it. Many a teenage boy has expressed intentions to sign a pact of friendship using their blood as ink. For the less brave and less important agreements, a solemn swapping of palms of spit would probably suffice. Ancient tribal practices all over the world throughout history involve sealing deals or confirming agreements with ceremonial cuts to produce blood to mix from the two parties. While these practices may seem absurd to a civilized society, it reflects a common idea across cultures that agreements required skin in the game. Someone with nothing to lose is much less likely to keep their end of a bargain. Blood is required for life.

    And even those who never heard God declare to the Israelites that the life is in the blood, they have understood blood to have great significance. This strange fluid flowing through our bodies is vitally important for our physical lives, and it has added historical weight and importance to documents, alliances, or treaties. To seal a death threat in blood was to increase its threatening effect, but to seal a pact of friendship in blood was an attempt to demonstrate its unbreakableness. Blood plays an important part in the inauguration of God’s covenant with Israel through Moses, as recounted in our passage this evening. As verse 18 says, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. Blood was the price for inaugurating the covenant, because blood was also the price for the breaking of the covenant. Thus we are told in verse 22, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

    And we’re going to look at this passage under three headings this evening. Number one is cutting a covenant. Number two, diatheke, a will or a covenant. And number three, blood, convicting or cleansing. So number one, cutting a covenant. In verse 15 we’re told, therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant. Now this is not the first time that we’ve encountered this language. The author of Hebrews has been talking about Christ as the mediator of a new covenant since chapter seven. And most of chapter eight was devoted to a long quotation about this new covenant. But in our passage this evening he’s talking about the ghastly requirements for covenants. Now anyone who’s spent much time around Christians who believe in Reformed theology will have heard the word covenant more than a few times. Sometimes covenant theology is even used interchangeably with Reformed theology.

    But despite its widespread usage, a succinct definition is not always easy to find. Because covenant theology encompasses so many aspects of God’s relationship with his people and touches so many important truths, it often becomes complicated. The bottom line, however, the simplest summary is God’s promise to Abraham all the way through repeated in Revelation. I will be your God and you will be my people. The covenant means God gives structure, definition and security to his relationship with his people. Covenant theology is so named because it sees covenants as one of the most important ways to understand the overarching story of the Bible, particularly two big or main covenants, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Very briefly, the covenant of works was what God made with Adam. He told the first man, Adam, obey me and live, disobey me and die.

    Now the Westminster Confession of Faith explains this concept in chapter seven. You can find that in the back of your Trinity Psalter hymnal on page 923. The first paragraph of chapter seven says this, The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe to him obedience as their creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he has been pleased to express by way of covenant. God didn’t have to create Adam in the first place, so he certainly wasn’t obligated to give Adam life as a reward for obedience. As a creature, Adam owed God perfect obedience already, but God graciously bound himself, saying that he would reward Adam with life if he simply obeyed, but conversely would punish him with death for disobedience.

    Paragraph two of the Westminster Confession, chapter seven, The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works wherein life was promised to Adam and in him to his posterity upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. The blessings of the covenant were contingent on Adam’s works, his obedience. Adam was created morally good and capable of obeying God, yet he instead chose to disobey. He broke God’s covenant, as Pastor Jeff was talking about this morning. By rights, God could have said, well, the bargain for death was disobedience. The bargain was death for disobedience and simply given Adam death, pure and simple. Instead, God instituted another covenant, which we call the covenant of grace. Paragraph three of the Westminster Confession, chapter seven, Man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace, wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe.

    One way to think of it is that receiving the reward of life and escaping the punishment of death isn’t based on our works. It’s based on God’s grace. In this way, it replaces the covenant of works. But in another sense, the covenant of grace fits inside the covenant of works as an alternative fulfillment of it. Based on the covenant of works, all sinners deserve the punishment of death. Yet Christ became a man and obeyed God perfectly. He fulfilled the requirement of the covenant of works and graciously offers sinful men the opportunity to swap out their disobedience for his perfect obedience. Since obeying God perfectly is not an option for sinners like us, the only way to escape eternal death and inherit eternal life is on the gracious merits of another. Both covenants are fundamentally based on obedience to God’s law.

    Works. The difference is whether you receive what your works deserve or what Christ’s works deserve. Will your eternal destiny be based on your own disobedience or Christ’s obedience? You’re either relying on your own works or on Christ’s works. As you can see, this is the whole undergirding framework for the Gospel. The covenant of works lays the framework for understanding the paradigm in which we find ourselves. As humans, we’re born into the covenant of works, deserving death for our ancestors’ disobedience as well as our own additions to that ledger. Our only hope is a gracious intervention, which is why we call God’s offer of an alternative fulfillment the covenant of grace. Without understanding this to some degree, it’s hard to understand why Jesus had to die for sins. Now that’s the 30,000-foot view of the covenant of grace, but if we zoom in through the Old Testament, we see God making covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, and then a new covenant in Jesus.

    Covenant theology sees all of these smaller specific covenants as pictures and sketches, which were pointing to what Christ was going to do. So they’re all part of one big covenant of grace. And while there are many beautiful aspects to God’s covenants, there’s also some ugly bits, specifically the threat of breaking the covenant, which is represented by animal death. We see this in Abraham’s practice in Genesis 15, verses 8-10. Genesis 15, verses 8-10. But Abraham said, Oh, Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? God said to him, Bring me a heifer, three years old, a female goat, three years old, a ram, three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid them over against the other. Skipping to verse 17 and 18, When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

    On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram. The animal pieces were cut to signify the penalty for breaking this covenant. And while this is not spelled out in Genesis 15, if we flip ahead to the prophet Jeremiah and look at Jeremiah chapter 34, we see this threat made very clear, and we understand what was going on. So Jeremiah chapter 34, starting in verse 18. The Lord is speaking, and he says, And the man who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made with me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts. The officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf.

    And I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives. Their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth. The normal practice in the ancient Near East was for both parties who were making a covenant to pass between these animal carcasses to demonstrate their obligation to suffer a similar fate if they broke the covenant. The practice was so common and widespread that the way you said make a covenant in Hebrew is actually the verb to cut. You cut a covenant. You don’t create, establish, or make a covenant in Hebrew. You literally cut a covenant. And this symbolic slaughter of animals was meant to represent the threat of death both parties faced for breaking that covenant. Now our passage in Hebrews this evening focuses in on the covenant ceremony that was described in Exodus 24 as we read earlier.

    The prominence of blood is unmistakable. Exodus chapter 24 verses 6 through 8 again. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins. And half of the blood he threw against the altar. And he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, all that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient. And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, behold, the blood of the covenant that God has made with you in accordance with all these words. It’s a pretty gruesome scene. Basins of blood from slaughtered animals here and there, on the altar, the book of the covenant, even on the people. The inauguration of a covenant was not a neat, tidy affair. The covenant had to be cut.

    Blood had to be spilled. Psalm 50 that we read in our call to worship mentions it as a sacrifice in verse 5. Psalm 50 verse 5, gather to me my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. When the author of Hebrews paraphrases Moses’ words in verse 20 of our passage, he says, saying this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. The way he phrases it sounds a lot like Jesus’ words found in Matthew 26, 28. When Jesus said, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. This is what’s going on in our passage in verse 15. Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

    Disobedience made Adam’s offspring ineligible for the promised inheritance, eternal life, and fellowship with God. Abraham’s offspring also broke God’s covenant, as did Israel’s offspring, David’s offspring, and all the rest. The covenant stipulated death, eternal death. But Christ came and inaugurated a new covenant in his blood. His death has been substituted for ours so that we can receive the blessings instead of the curse. Welcome to the covenant of grace. As we move through our passage, we’re confronted with some difficulty in the next two verses, so we’ll spend a little time unraveling a long-standing issue of interpretation. So, number two, diotheke, a will or a covenant. This is looking at verses 16 and 17. Dia what? Diotheke is the Greek word for covenant. We’re going to get a little technical at this point, so you’ll want to have your Bibles in front of you and perhaps your outlines so that you can follow what’s going on.

    Now, as we start to look at verses 16 and 17, there’s no question that these are a little challenging to understand. They’re also challenging to translate. The writer of Hebrews is rather brief in his wording, and he leaves a lot to be assumed. Figuring out how these words relate to each other has given translators a bit of difficulty. There are two main ways that these verses are translated. One is the way that you have them in the ESV. And this centers on assuming that the writer of Hebrews is making a wordplay and briefly using the word diotheke in its secular usage, but then switching back to the Biblical use for the rest of the passage. But a minority of Biblical scholars have questioned whether that really makes the most sense of what’s going on. Here’s the background.

    The Greek word for covenant, diotheke, means something slightly different in wider Greek culture. To the rest of the Greek-speaking world, a diotheke was a will or a testament. But when the Jews who spoke Greek were looking for a word to use for God’s covenant in the Old Testament and were translating the Hebrew scriptures, they used this word, diotheke. They changed the wider meaning of diotheke by using it in this specific sense. This meant that diotheke had a secular meaning, will, in the culture. But when it was used in the Bible, it always meant covenant. There’s nowhere in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, that they ever use a different word. And they never used diotheke for any other meaning. Despite this, many good Bible scholars believe that the writer of Hebrews is making a reference to the secular meaning of diotheke, a wordplay, as a will in verses 16 and 17.

    They look at the reference to the inheritance in verse 15 and think that the next two verses must be an attempt to bring the two meanings of diotheke together. The thinking process of this perspective works like this. Jesus had to die, so the believers who are redeemed could receive salvation, which is called inheritance. That’s sort of like a will, which distributes a person’s property after he dies, the inheritance that he leaves. Perhaps the writer of Hebrews is switching back, making a wordplay, switching back to the secular meaning of diotheke in verses 16 and 17 for a moment, to make a point about how Christ died and that gives us the inheritance of salvation. While this is a cool and interesting idea, which, to be clear, is not out of line with Scripture on the whole, I don’t think that’s what’s actually going on in this passage.

    After studying more deeply this week, I’ve become convinced that it’s better to translate diotheke as covenant the whole way through our passage, even verses 16 and 17, and not switch it in the middle. Verse 18, it begins with a strong therefore, a word assuming a tightly coherent argument. But if we translate diotheke as will, that assumes that the argument is rather disjointed. A reference to the secular use of diotheke as will at the exact moment when the author is trying to make a point about the covenant from the Old Testament seems odd. Furthermore, if the author were making a wordplay, as the ESV translates it, the logic of verse 16 and 17 still doesn’t quite make sense. Verses 16 and 17, for where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.

    For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. In Greek and Roman culture, just like our own, a will could be enforced before death. Although death was the usual point at which property was distributed according to a will, it was legally enforced the moment it was drafted and signed. Think of the prodigal son. While his behavior was rude and foolish, we have no indication that it was considered impossible or completely unheard of for a father to distribute inheritance early. So it is strange for verse 17 to insist that a will is not in force while its maker lives. But the biggest challenge to translating diotheke as will comes from the passage as a whole in the Greek. The ESV gives a logical flow in English and makes it sound like will makes sense.

    But this only comes by translating some of the Greek words in ways that they’re not normally translated. Now to keep things simple, I’ll point out only one example in each verse, which makes the translation of diotheke as will unlikely. If we look at verse 16, it says must be established. The Greek word translated established doesn’t have that meaning anywhere else it shows up. It normally means to carry like a load or bear like a fruit, either literally or metaphorically. The Greek in verse 16 would more literally read for where there is a covenant or will, it is necessary that the death of the one who made it must be born or represented. Words can have a range of meanings, and this Greek word has a big range. But it doesn’t mean established in any other biblical context that we know of.

    This passage would be the first and only place that it means established. Now of course this doesn’t seal the deal by itself. The way we learn the range of a word’s meaning is by looking at all of its uses in context. But the main reason to translate it as established here is because of the assumption that the sentence is talking about a will rather than a covenant. It’s begging the question, which means assuming the position it’s supposed to be trying to argue for. Now in verse 17, we have the word death. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not enforced as long as the one who made it is alive. The word death here is actually plural in Greek. In almost any other context, this word would be translated corpses or dead things.

    Things that are dead, more than one. But once again, in order to support the translation of the deotheke as will instead of covenant, this normal plural noun is translated as a singular. It requires a unique translation of this plural noun as a singular in this instance. The bottom line is that when translating this passage from the Greek, in order to try to make the translation of deotheke mean will instead of covenant, it requires translating other words in unusual ways as well. This boils down to the reality that I think makes the most sense to translate it as covenant. In every other passage, in every other instance, the biblical writers all use this same word deotheke exclusively in its technical biblical sense, covenant. So it seems unlikely that the writer is referring to the secular meaning of will instead of sticking with the biblical technical meaning.

    Well, what might it sound like if we stuck to the translation of covenant all the way through? Here’s one commentator’s translation. I put it in your outline so that you can follow along. He says, For where there is a covenant, it is necessary that the death of the one making it be represented. For a covenant is made legally firm on the basis of dead victims, since it is not valid while the one making it is alive. You can see that compared with the ESV’s translation below. I don’t want you to lose the big picture here. This position is a minority opinion among good Bible scholars. Most Bible translations translate it as will. So I don’t want to overstate the importance of this difference. Before studying for this sermon, I liked the idea of will. I even wrote a paper on it in seminary.

    But I also want to say that ultimately translating it as will instead of covenant, it doesn’t affect any biblical doctrines. I think that the translation of will is well-intended and meant to give clarity. But I still think it is incorrect and less clear. I believe the best to stay consistent with translating Diotheca as covenant in all instances and work out the challenges presented in the passage a different way. Now the commentator that I quoted earlier explains the argument from Hebrews verses 16 and 17 by paraphrasing it this way. Once again, I’ve listed this in your outline to help you follow along. For where there is a covenant, it is necessary that the one making it be represented by sacrifice in order to demonstrate the curse under which they are placing themselves if they break the covenant.

    For a covenant is made legally firm on the basis of a ritual involving dead victims. Since it is not valid while the one making it is alive. That is, unless one’s death is legally represented by the sacrificial animals. This would mean that the author of Hebrews is referring to part of the traditional covenant ritual in which animals were cut up. This would form a tight-knit argument with what comes before and what comes after. The cut-up animals representing the participants cutting the covenant and symbolized the potential consequences for breaking it. Although inheritance is mentioned in verse 15, the focus of the whole passage is not on the distribution of possessions to heirs, but on redemption and the establishment of a covenant through blood. In the end, although the translation of Diotheca as well as a popular solution to the challenge of translating verses 16 and 17 doesn’t solve every issue, I think it even creates some new ones.

    I think the entire passage makes the most sense when Diotheca is consistently translated as a covenant, which required bloodshed, which leads to our final point. Bloodshed. Convicting or cleansing. The description of the covenantal ceremony in our passage, as we stated before, sounds like a bloody mess. Verses 18 through 21. And sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. And in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Blood was spilled and sprinkled on everyone and everything. It can be easy to gloss over these descriptions and sanitize things in our minds. I’m extremely grateful I don’t need to bring butcher knives to worship or to keep bloodstain remover on hand for use after every service.

    But for the people in the Old Covenant, blood was a reality of worshiping God. Atonement is not a clean, tidy affair. Forgiveness required more than an apology and a promise to do better next time. The blood would have been a perpetual reminder of what their forgiveness cost. From the first Passover day, they were delivered from the execution of the firstborn in Egypt to Mount Sinai to the daily morning and evening sacrifices. The Israelites were reminded constantly that the favor they enjoyed from God was blood bought. Their safety came at the expense of another’s life. Blood in the Old Covenant was intended to convey cleansing, but also inescapably represented the ever-present threat if they broke the Covenant. Although the Covenant was a part of the Covenant of Grace, representing that same source of salvation, it was an incomplete administration.

    The bloody mess was pointing ahead to a time when the true sacrifice would be offered and the people would be clean inside and out. God offers Israel a famous bargain in Isaiah 1 verse 18. He says, It’s an odd picture to suggest that blood can take bright red filth and make it white as snow. To the outsider, the Bible asserts an odd proposition that things can be cleansed with blood. Anyone who’s cared for kids or worked in medical settings would probably suggest the opposite. Blood is what makes things messy. It’s certainly not what you would use to create a clean surface or garment. We try to avoid contact with blood and for good reason. It’s important to remember that sometimes the biblical idea that blood could actually cleanse may not be intuitive to those around us in our culture.

    Blood doesn’t cleanse the outside, but our biggest problem is not what’s on the outside. The filth of a sinful soul far surpasses any stain on clothing or skin. The Covenant was inaugurated in blood because it was only through the death of a substitute that the people could have peaceful union with God. The only way for him to be their God and for them to be his people was for another to die for their covenant breaking. For the Israelite, blood was a daily reality. It was a constant reminder of the cost and consequence of sin. Perhaps some more thoughtful Christians might ask, would it be better to have more blood in our worship services to encourage our own awareness of our sin and its penalty? The Roman Catholic Church is one branch of the Christian tradition that leans very heavily in that direction.

    While they don’t sacrifice animals or bring in actual blood, they assert that in an undetectable way the bread and wine served in the Lord’s Supper transform into a physical body and physical blood of Christ. And he has sacrificed anew in each service of mass. Not only is this view illogical and wrong on numerous levels, it also misses the point of Christ’s sacrifice, which was meant to be once for all. Our bloodless worship services celebrate the fact that the full price has been fully paid. Death is ended because one has died for all. We’re meant to be distanced from the physical blood, because with Christ’s death, with his bloodshed, we have nothing to fear. The threat of death for our covenant breaking has been carried out against Christ, leaving us with nothing but the benefits of life.

    Our bodies are no longer sprinkled with the blood of animals, because our souls have been soaked once for all in the efficacious blood of Jesus Christ the Righteous. We remember the immeasurable price that was paid for us to inherit the blessings instead of the curses, but no longer with actual blood, because the only blood that truly matters has been shed once and for all. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. But with the shedding of blood, the blood of the Son of God, there is complete forgiveness of sins. As we’ll sing in a moment, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. My favorite verse is the last one. Dear dying lamb, your precious blood shall never lose its power until all the ransomed Church of God are saved to sin no more.

    Amen. Let’s pray. Father in Heaven, we thank you for inaugurating covenant, for establishing the covenant of grace built upon the merits of Christ, that you graciously give the benefits of His bloodshed to those that by faith embrace Him. We thank you for that cleansing blood. We thank you that we no longer need to be close to such physical blood, because you have cleansed our souls. You have shed that blood once and for all, and now welcome us into your covenant of grace. We thank you for this, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let’s turn now in response to sing hymn number 340. Let’s stand as we sing hymn 340. There is a fountain filled with blood.

    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.