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Let’s turn now in our copy of God’s Word to Hebrews chapter 6.
We’ll be reading verses 9 through 15 this morning.
Hebrews chapter 6, verses 9 through 15.
This is God’s Word.
Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation.
For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work, and the love that you have shown for His name in serving the saints as you still do.
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish.
But imitators of those who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.
For when God made a promise to Abraham, since He had no one greater by whom to swear, He swore by Himself, saying, Surely I will bless you and multiply you.
And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.
Amen.
Father in heaven, we come to you to bless your name, but also to receive a blessing, to be fed by your Word.
Lord, we ask that the same Spirit that inspired these words thousands of years ago might be present with us today, to open our hearts and minds and eyes, to hear and see and understand what you have for us.
We ask that you might be present, Holy Spirit, for the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Amen.
Have you ever had to do an exercise called six inches?
I’m pretty sure anyone who’s spent time in the military knows and perhaps dreads this exercise well.
I spent my first year in college in Army ROTC.
Three days a week we would show up at six a.m. to work out as a group.
One of the most complained about exercises was something called six inches.
The source of the name was simple.
It said lie on your back and keep your legs up six inches, no more, no less.
While some suppose that the height was determined by what would cause maximum pain, others assured us it was intended to develop maximum abdominal strength.
For a few seconds there was no problem.
The catch was that you had to hold that position for a minute or two at a time.
Not only did it begin taxing the abdominal muscles to maintain this position, but boredom quickly set in as well.
With push-ups and sit-ups you could count reps, but with six inches it was just a matter of waiting.
One thing that helped was that we always worked out together.
So knowing everyone else was facing the same fatigue and pain helped us a little bit.
And if anyone started to dip we would encourage each other to keep going.
But what I always found the most helpful was thinking about the goal of getting stronger.
Remembering the larger point of what I was doing and putting my momentary experience into that larger perspective is what helped me the most.
When I lost that perspective, no amount of encouragement or threatening was able to make me continue.
I just gave up.
In Hebrews 6, our writer has stated his goal for his readers, to have the full assurance of hope until the end.
And he lays out how that works in this passage.
We’ve got three important ingredients in our passage for the full assurance of hope.
Earnestness, imitation, and patience.
I’ve phrased each with a word that begins with the same letter as we consider each one.
We’ll look at number one, the exigency of earnestness.
Two, the importance of imitation.
And three, the prerequisite of patience.
Number one, the exigency of earnestness.
Exigen what?
Exigency is a word that just means urgency or importance.
By the way, I don’t use big words to impress anyone.
I like to throw in unusual words in my sermons sometimes because I know we have a lot of smart individuals here at Grace.
Some of them are wordsmiths who enjoy learning new words and studying them.
But I don’t want anyone to get lost or left behind, so I always try to explain them.
Exigency works well here because it starts with an E, just like earnestness.
But if it’s easier to remember importance or urgency of earnestness, that’s fine too.
Let’s take a look at Hebrews 6-11.
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end.
Earnestness and assurance of hope in our passage have a two-way relationship.
They both need each other and they both fuel each other.
You won’t be able to stay earnest in your faith without the strong hope in God and what’s coming.
And you won’t be assured in your hope if you become sluggish in your Christian life.
So consider first the way that assurance needs earnestness.
So this ties in with what Pastor Jeff has been looking at in this series, Sunday Nights, on 2 Peter.
As it says in 2 Peter 1-10,
Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.
For if you practice these qualities, you’ll never call.
Pastor Jeff talked about what it means to confirm your calling.
Or as other translations say, you make your calling sure.
While assurance is a gift of God, he comes as we pursue God earnestly.
A sluggish Christian who treats his salvation as an occasional hobby
may be able to maintain a false sense of assurance for his own spiritual safety.
But this is a far cry from the confidence that believers may have when they earnestly pursue God
through prayer, his word, his worship, and his people.
And that’s why Peter says to engage, to make every effort, to be diligent, to confirm your calling.
If you’re letting sin reign in your life, you should expect to doubt your salvation.
Conversely, as you repent and claim to Christ, you should expect to be assured of your salvation.
Of course, for every believer, at any given moment, life is not so clean and neat with such a direct correlation.
This is the way both believers sometimes go for long periods, struggling with assurance despite their earnestness.
So this leads us to the second way that earnestness and hopeful assurance interact.
We’ll look at secondly how earnestness needs hope.
By hope, we mean more than simply a rosy outlook on the future.
The biblical concept of hope is very closely tied to the idea of faith.
When the Bible says that the Christian lived by faith, not by sight, it’s primarily talking about hope.
Pastor John Piper describes hope as faith in future grace.
Another way to say it is hope is a confident expectation that God will do what he has promised.
Hope, faith, future grace.
How does this connect to earnestness?
Well, consider an analogy from the workplace.
Have you ever tried to work on a project or at a company in which the goal was unclear?
Either your own personal role was not clearly relevant or useful to the stated goal, or you didn’t even know what the company’s objective was.
It can be frustrating.
If it goes on very long, it causes the employees to disengage.
Rather than bringing energy, excitement, investment, the employees begin to slack off and do the minimum to get by.
And something similar can happen to us in our Christian life when we lose sight of eternity.
The things that were once joys become duties or even struggles.
Instead of feeling like we’re connected to God, despising our sin, empowered in prayer, passionate in worship, and eager to use our gifts for God’s glory,
we start to feel like prayer is too hard.
Sin doesn’t quite seem so bad.
We just don’t have time to read the Word.
Just showing up to worship is the battle, and serving others is the last thing on our mind.
But we lose sight of eternity.
Where everything is going, sin loses its dangerous edge, and spiritual sluggishness can quickly set in.
In verse 10, we see the author drawing his readers’ attention back to God’s reward.
Look at verse 10.
For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you have shown for his name in serving the sins that you still do.
The writer has observed the earnestness displayed in his readers by loving to glorify God’s name by serving the saints.
But he wants to make sure this is not confined to a few standouts in the congregation.
He says in verse 11,
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness.
The language here is of deep desire.
The author is passionate about each individual hearer demonstrating earnestness in their Christian faith.
Just being part of the group won’t cut it.
God’s judgment will be completely individualized.
But also every act of love in his name for his glory will be noted.
It is called for his readers to be earnest.
He reminds them of the eternal context.
The Christian life is a life lived under an eschatological perspective.
Eschatology, as most of you know, just comes from the Greek word eschatos, which means last.
And together it just means last things.
Christians are those who live their lives in the life of the last things.
We aren’t going around just trying to make the world a better place.
Our modern culture thinks religion is just about helping you feel a little better about your own life.
Maybe your beliefs give you some purpose or comfort or answers.
But whether or not they’re true is irrelevant.
Some people even join Christianity under those assumptions.
It’s a pretty good option. It probably will make my life better.
While the Bible has much to say about the blessings that God loves to shower his people with in this life,
the Christian hope has always looked far beyond anything available in this life.
In fact, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15-19 that if Christianity were confined to this life, we might as well forget it.
He says, if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
If you take out the end game of Christianity, it’s not worth it.
Christians are those who have recognized the danger that their sin puts them in.
In light of a certain judgment of God in the world, and been given the grace to hate that sin and embrace the mercy of God in Christ,
and have an eternal perspective, we’re looking for Jesus to come back.
And this gives life its seriousness and earnestness.
When you understand that this life is just a prelude to eternity, it imbues life with weight and seriousness,
which calls for and fuels earnestness.
But the author of Hebrews doesn’t envision individuals maintain this earnestness by themselves on their own.
So secondly, he brings up the importance of imitation.
The importance of imitation. Look at verse 12 of Hebrews 6.
So that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
It could have just said that he wanted his readers to be those who inherit the promises.
Instead he adds, imitators of those who inherit the promises.
As we see a little later on, he’s clearly got Abraham in view in our passage.
But we also know from the famous Hebrews 11, the hall of faith, that this author is thinking of others as well.
He’s highlighting the important reality that Christians need examples to imitate, as well as to be examples worthy of imitation.
The idea of having an example, having a mentor, is not something new.
Robert Coleman wrote a book many years ago called The Master Plan of Evangelism.
And in it he laid out Jesus’ model of gathering followers who would observe his life and listen to his teaching.
People he could mentor. These 12 disciples and others were to find others who would become their disciples.
Jesus began a discipleship chain.
This is the way Christianity works. This is the way it was designed to work.
Jesus told his disciples, after he rose, just before he ascended, as you’re going, make disciples of all nations.
This first happens with godly parents to children.
The goal of godly parenting is not simply to maximize your children’s potential and make them successful, but to instill godliness.
Unlike many other religions, Christianity has always placed a high priority on education.
But as one commentator on this passage says, Christian education is more than theoretical learning.
It includes the whole person and entails the formation of ethical, social, and personal qualities.
And it takes place through personal fellowship and emulation.
It’s in a Christian’s DNA to be a disciple, a follower, of Christ ultimately, but secondly, faithful godly saints as well.
But one of the ways that it ties in with earnestness is that it requires intentionality.
My wife has always been better at this than I have.
At every stage of her life, she was trying to make sure she has at least one older woman who can give her wisdom in one or more aspects of her life.
This didn’t mean she had only one person she went to.
She often has multiple mentors at any given time who are better equipped to speak into one area of life or another.
And these don’t stay the same. They change throughout her life.
But I’ve seen how important this is for her.
And I’ve also seen how this isn’t always easy.
Relationships like this have to be pursued. They don’t usually fall into your lap.
This is an area I’m trying to get better at myself.
And as Christians, we ought to have mentors.
Now this doesn’t have to be someone you’re meeting with every week, even for hours at a time or every day.
It also doesn’t have to be someone that can speak into all areas of your life.
Merely someone who’s ahead of you in one or more areas of the Christian life so that they can help you live yours.
Someone you can imitate in certain ways.
Now while there’s no substitute for living mentors, don’t forget about those that are no longer with us.
I found Christian biographies to be incredibly helpful in my own Christian life.
Sometimes the fact that they lived in a different time and a different place can give real insight and encouragement in our walk with the Lord.
But of course the flip side of making sure you have a mentor yourself is being one to someone else.
Christians are intended to be able to say, as Paul did,
Follow me as I follow Christ.
If you don’t believe you’re living a life worthy of emulation, what are you doing?
This is one of the reasons for joining a faithful church.
We take responsibility for being an example and a help to others in the body.
Being imitatable, worthy of imitation, involves earnestness, taking our faith seriously.
Not only being mindful of your own example generally, but seeking out those who might need guidance,
who could benefit from your wisdom, as well as responding favorably when asked about serving as a mentor for someone else.
Earnestness is not something we can maintain on our own.
One or two bad students in a class can bring the whole class down.
A couple of lazy people on your work team can sap morale from everyone else.
That’s why the author of Hebrews is urging his readers to seek out the earnest believers who are actively engaged and imitate them.
He wants earnestness to become contagious by imitation fueled by hope.
As we look back at our passage, we see that the writer has Abraham in view most immediately.
He holds him up as an example worthy of imitation in verse 15.
And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise, which brings us to what we are especially to imitate.
And we see thirdly, the prerequisite of patience.
Prerequisite, by the way, just means something that’s required before something else.
Look at verse 12 and verse 15 again.
Verse 12, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Verse 15, and thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.
The focus on earnestness might leave us with the impression that the writer intends for his audience to always be busy,
living loud, flashy lives.
But we see here that the earnestness that he has in mind involves a lot of patience.
Patience involves waiting, but it’s not merely waiting.
It involves a certain posture towards waiting.
If he was going to pick someone to model patience, Abraham is an excellent choice.
If you look at Abraham’s accomplishments for his entire life, they pretty much consist of waiting around.
He moved around, waited, had a kid, waited, waited some more, and died.
As a kid, I remember questioning why Abraham was so significant as a patriarch.
But the author of Hebrews holds up Abraham as an example par excellence, which just means the best example, of patience.
One of the reasons is because Abraham had far less revelation to go on.
Compared to what you and I can read about in our God and our entire Bibles, Abraham had almost nothing.
Yet, he obeyed God. He depended on him, and he trusted him.
We find a description of Abraham’s faith in Romans chapter 4, verses 19 through 20.
Romans 4, 19.
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 barrenness 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.
That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.
We find another description in Hebrews chapter 11.
We look ahead to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 8.
It says, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out for 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 to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
The bottom line in Hebrews chapter 11 is that none of these believers saw the complete fulfillment of all that God had promised.
They lived their whole lives waiting.
Even now they are waiting for the final fulfillment.
Notice the themes of inheritance and promise that appear in Hebrews 11 as well as in Hebrews 6.
In Hebrews 6, our passage, verse 12, it says, Inherit the promises.
And in verse 15, it says, Obtain the promise.
Why the difference in wording?
In verse 12, what he says, inherit the promises.
He’s focusing on the fact that God’s promises are guaranteed.
He’s telling his readers, be patient, your inheritance is already secured.
You’re already in a position to inherit.
You can be assured that God’s promises are locked in, only a matter of time before you possess them.
Perhaps some of you have had the opportunity to inherit something from a relative.
The act of inheriting is passive.
You just receive what’s given to you.
It comes about as a result of a death.
The death of the one who’s determined to give it to you.
There’s nothing for you to do but wait.
The author of Hebrews is going to pick up this idea and expand on it when we get to chapter 9.
It has something to do with why we call the two parts of our Bible the Old and New Testaments.
We’ll talk about that more when we get there.
But as heirs of God’s promised inheritance, it required the death of the testator in order to release the inheritance.
This is one of the reasons why Jesus had to die for us to be saved.
In order for us to receive God’s inheritance for us, the second part of the Trinity, Jesus had to die.
Abraham is a model because he received the promises of God as truth even before they had been fulfilled.
They weren’t fulfilled in Abraham’s lifetime because we who believed are part of God’s promise to Abraham in Galatians 3, 6-9.
We have this explanation, Galatians 3, just as Abraham believed God who was counted to him as righteousness.
Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
In the scripture, for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith,
preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying,
In you shall all the nations be blessed.
So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
The bottom line is that Abraham didn’t love Paul that impressive.
And that’s the whole point.
God doesn’t save the impressive.
He saves the undeserving, the helpless.
They can’t help themselves.
Abraham’s passive role in salvation highlights God’s glory.
Puts the spotlight on God right where it should be.
The whole point of the story is that, no, Abraham didn’t do anything to make God obligated to save him.
He just said, OK, thank you.
And this flies in the face of human pride, which wants to offer God something in exchange for his salvation, to buy it somehow.
But God’s salvation is a gift of grace, which is unmeritable by anyone except Christ himself.
The writer of Hebrews is calling his readers to imitate Abraham and simply receive God’s promises as a gift.
But then in verse 15 of chapter 6, the author uses the word obtain the promise.
This word puts the focus on the means and the manner by which believers receive the promise.
While inheritance puts the focus on the source,
the fact that it’s certain to be ours and completely unmerited by us.
Obtain reminds us of our part in this, how we discover it, obtain it, achieve it.
We’ve highlighted Abraham’s passivity in simply receiving the promise.
But that’s not the whole picture.
Waiting isn’t always easy, especially waiting with patience.
Because as wonderful as God’s promises are, he doesn’t give them all at once.
Hebrews 11 is rightly known as the hall of faith, but it could also be called the hall of waiting.
It ends with verses 39 and 40 of Hebrews 11 go like this.
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.
We find a constant refrain of the Psalms.
I waited for the Lord, he saved me.
We need help.
On the one hand, we don’t have a choice.
Without God’s help, we don’t have any help.
But on the other hand, there’s good ways to wait and bad ways.
The waiting that the Psalms are talking about is the waiting of Abraham.
Thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.
God’s help is found obtained by those who wait in patience.
And this is the way Abraham obtained God’s promises.
And it’s the way you and I will obtain the promises of God, by waiting on God.
Unlike Abraham, we have the testimony of multitudes relaying their own productive patience as a result of their waiting on God.
We can imitate them.
Patience is notorious as a dangerous prayer request, since the only way to learn patience is through waiting.
Patience can be learned by taking a class, reading an annual, it’s learned one day at a time.
Every time God delays an hour, more than you would like him to, is an opportunity to practice patience.
You can either respond in anger, distrusting God’s wisdom and or goodness.
Either he’s not aware of how important it is for this to happen on this time table, or he just wants me to be miserable.
Or you can ask God to keep your eyes on the prize, on the assurance of hope.
What you’re waiting for is worth it.
While it may be simple to state, the daily living out of patience is always challenging.
One of the key things to remember is that you don’t have all the resources in yourself that you need to be patient.
That’s why when you’re waiting on God, you need God to help you wait in patience.
You will be pushed past what you think you can endure, because otherwise it wouldn’t require patience.
If you try to maintain patience in your own strength, God will push you past your own resources until you start to see how much you need him.
Patience is not about becoming a stoic who’s unaffected by difficulty or calamity.
That can be achieved without God’s help.
Godly patience is learning to stop leaning on your own resources and understanding, and leaning into God’s, leaning onto his.
Patience can be described as waiting in earnest, bringing it back to earnestness.
We see that patience is no walk in the park.
It requires continual earnest refocusing on God and his promises.
Patience doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t show up in connection with sluggishness.
But we aren’t alone.
There are saints all around us who have gone before us and have earnestly waited on God in patience for him to fulfill his promises.
As we imitate Abraham and earnestly wait upon the Lord in faith to fulfill his promises, we become part of God’s fulfilling his promises to Abraham.
Like Abraham, we become those who stop trusting on our own strength, stop looking for assurance inside of ourselves, but lean on God and his promises.
Only then can we have the full assurance of hope, faith, and future grace until the end.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you desire us to have the full assurance of hope, and you give us in your word this assurance that you will be with us to the end, that you are worth waiting on, waiting for, that you will help us in the delay,
that your delay is out of kindness, that you are giving opportunities for repentance.
We ask that you give us patience, give us hope, have a full assurance of hope until the end.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
For our response, let’s turn our psalter handles to number 469.
Number 469, who are these like stars appearing? And if you would please stand, we will sing.