do that. After singing that song and listening
to Brother Eric, I feel like saying, all right, we'll sing
our final hymn and go home. That is the essence of all that
we preach here. I hope the day doesn't come when I'll feel like preaching and you'll
have to listen to a sermon that is not about Christ and Him crucified,
that does not put us all in a state of amazement and wonder at what
has been done for us by God through Jesus Christ. That's why I can't understand
why preachers want to talk about politics. That's a nasty cesspool. Why
do I want to go there on Sundays? I've got to put up with that
Monday through Saturday. Why do they want to do long extended
series about how to raise your children? or be successful in life. I'm not saying these subjects
are not important and don't deserve some time, but they mean nothing
at all apart from what we sang, comments our brothers
made, and what Paul meant when he said, I determined to know
nothing among you other than Christ, and him crucified. If you'll open your Bibles now
to Hebrews chapter 3. The title of this morning's message
is Exhortations from the Book of Hebrews. And if I got done studying for
it before I came up with a title, I could have told you how many
exhortations, but I didn't know. I got four of them here. We'll
see how many of them we get through. Each one of them warrants a message
all on its own, but I want to get an overview. Sometimes we
can get bogged down in the details. It's like coming up real close
to a painting, and you're examining brushstrokes and colors. when
you need to stand back and look at the picture. And so I'll try
to do that. So hang on, we're gonna have
to move along. This book was written, we don't
know who wrote it, but it was written to Jewish believers who
were enduring severe persecution from their brethren in the flesh. The first ones to persecute believers
were the Jews, and that should not surprise us. It was they
who, I say they, their leaders, who pushed for the crucifixion of
the Lord Jesus. They hated him. So it should
not surprise us that they hated those who believed and loved
Christ. And this persecution took the
form of having properties seized. Some were put to death. And I
imagine that one of the most difficult things to endure for
them was that their kinsmen, according to the flesh, the Jews,
shunned them. They said, you are no more a
part of us. Families, disowned children,
parents, spouses, They said, if you're going to
believe that, we want nothing to do with you. That's tough. That's really hard. I can't imagine
showing up at the house of any of my three children and to have any one of them say,
You are no more my father. You are not welcome here. Never
come back. That's what these believers were
dealing with. And you can imagine the temptation
that they felt to go back, to return to the synagogue, to
no more publicly meet with the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, thinking, well, we're worshiping
the same God. We're worshiping the same God
they claim to worship at the synagogue, so why can't we go
there? Yes, they've got some problems, but I can fill in the
gaps, because I know the truth, and I can be an undercover Christian. And then I can go back to my
children's home or my parents' home. I can probably regain my
property. I won't live in the danger of
being put to death. You know, we are susceptible
to such thinking, and even over much, much smaller
things. Who here has suffered severely
for the cause of Christ? I suppose that's a blessing in
our country. We are, at least at present,
free to worship as we believe. That's a relatively recent event
in human history. I mean, I know that the Declaration
of Independence was nearly 250 years ago, but that's just a
little blip on the screen when you think of all of human history. And for smaller things than that,
I have seen people go back or find some form of religion
that made them more socially acceptable, allowed them to advance
more in the society in which they live. I have seen or heard of some
who got a job offer with more money, more prestige, but it
involved them moving to a place where there was no church where
the gospel is preached. And they chose the money. the
gospel. We need exhortations such as
are found in this book. We know that if a person truly
believes the Lord Jesus Christ, they believe only because the
Holy Spirit has sovereignly invaded their heart, didn't knock on
the door and ask in, He broke down the door, he came in, and in as much as he is the spirit
of Christ, he looked over at us sitting upon the throne of
our own hearts and he said, that's mine. And he gave us a heart to get
off our own throne, have him sit on it. and He caused
us to believe Him and to trust Him, if indeed we are true believers. Here's the thing. While I can
tell you that I am a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, there's
only one thing that will prove it. Seeing that faith is an issue
of the heart, and you can't see my heart, the only way that I
can prove to you that I really believe is by believing until
I die. Now if I have that faith, which
is the gift of God, I will believe until I die. If I have that faith
that is stirred up by fleshly means or brought about through
the preaching of a false gospel, It is mere flesh, and it's quite
likely that that faith shall at some point fail. I don't just
mean that I would have doubts. That faith will fail in either
utter unbelief or simply taking up some version of the gospel
that is not true. It says in Hebrews chapter 11,
after giving a list of what we might consider some commendable
believers of the past, and it says, these all died in faith. There had been some strong evidences
of the reality of their faith during their lives, but this
was the proof of it. They died believing God. And so the exhortations contained
in this book, while given to first century Jews in order to
encourage them to remain faithful to the word of the gospel, more
importantly, faithful unto the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
gospel. Let's just put it that way. It's
easy to think that the gospel is simply a set of theological
doctrines. The gospel is a person. The doctrines are simply declarations
about Him and what He has done. But we need these exhortations
just as those Jews needed them, for in our day we face difficulties
in believing. And while we say that it is the
Spirit of God that calls and preserves the people of God,
he calls them and preserves them by the same means, through the
preaching of his word, that is his gospel, the testimony of
Jesus Christ, through the preaching of that, with the exhortation
to hold firm, to stay steady. Now this exhortation can be broken
down into parts and we see in chapter 3 verse 1 the first of
these exhortations. Therefore holy brothers who share
in the heavenly calling fix your thoughts on Jesus the Apostle
and High Priest whom we confess. Now I read to you the first chapter
of Hebrews to open this morning's worship and when you read of who Christ
is and what his work has accomplished. When you read that he is the
Son of God, God the Son, that he is the radiance of God's glory
and the exact representation of his being. When you read that
he upholds all things by the word his power. When you read that he made purification
for sins, and that having been successful in that work, he was
seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and God said
to him, you sit here till I make all your enemies a footstool
for your feet. Now when you see that, Jesus,
Not the Jesus preached up, unfortunately, in many, if not most, church
pulpits. Not the Jesus who wants to save
people, but they won't let him. Not the Jesus who came in an
attempt to save everyone, but it's quite obvious he failed
for the most part. Not the Jesus who is nothing
but sweetness and gentleness and love. Oh he's all those things,
but he's more. But when you've seen Jesus crowned
with glory and honor, as it says I believe in the second chapter
of Hebrews, crowned with all glory and honor and all things
put under his feet, When you see He is the sovereign Lord,
why would you want your thoughts to be anywhere else? And yet,
we are so easily distracted from Him. We live lives and there's things
we've got to do in this life. During our adult lives, most
of our adult lives, every morning, five days a week, we've got to
get up and go to our jobs. In the earlier part of our adulthood,
we may have gotten married and we've got some children, and
that requires some work and attention. These are good things. Everybody
needs some relaxation. All these things are necessary
parts of life. We know that. And they're not bad things. But
by things which are merely good, our enemy is able to distract
us from the one thing needful. Our Lord was at the home of Lazarus,
Martha, and Mary. And he was, as would have been
the custom in that day, he was sitting and teaching. And the men, as has probably
been true throughout history, were sitting and listening. Meanwhile, Martha, Martha who was concerned about
many things, there was food to prepare for all these people. Was the house cleaned up right? And Martha, and as a Southerner
I'll say, Martha, bless her heart, oh, she just got so frustrated. And you know why? Because Mary
was in there with the men sitting at the feet of the Lord Jesus. And she said, Master, would you tell Mary to come in
here and help me. I can completely understand what
she meant. Not that I've ever been in that
position, but I see the amount of effort
my wife puts in to preparing the house for guests, and how
quite often as she's preparing the house for guests, I'm in
the recliner watching TV. I know how frustrating that can
be. And the Lord said, Martha, Martha, you are troubled about
many things. But Mary, she has chosen the
one thing needful, and it will not be taken from her. Fix your thoughts on Jesus. When you think of the fact that
you could lose all your property because you believe the gospel,
how can you deal with that? Fix your thoughts on Jesus. If you face the possibility that
you could lose your very life and your family and your close
friends because of what you believe, more and more rightly, who you
believe. What you need to do is not think
about the loss, not think about what is put at
risk by believing, rather Fix your thoughts on the one in whom
you are trusting. There's a hymn, we rarely sing
it, and I couldn't tell you all the verses, but the chorus says,
turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face,
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light
of his glory and grace. You may think when you feel the
tug of temptation to depart and take an easier route than the
route of the gospel, you may think about possible losses. But if you think of the great
gain you see Him who is more glorious than you
can imagine, and you see that the blessings of heaven are not
in gold and pearls and mansions as some people think of them,
but rather the blessedness of heaven is Him. If you are a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ, if Christ is not in heaven, you don't want
to go there. You want to be where he is, wherever
that is, because he is your heaven. And what a wonderful heaven he
is. Fix your thoughts there. And
quickly in passing, notice this. He addresses this exhortation,
he says, holy brothers. There are churches that think
that they go out and by evangelistic efforts they quote get people
saved and then they get them in the church and they put them
on a path of becoming holy. That's not the way it is. Knowing that the words holy sanctify,
saint, and all those, they come from the same Greek word in the
New Testament. Do you know that everyone who
believes is holy? As the old hymn went, with his
holy garments on, I'm holy as the Holy One. This doesn't mean we shouldn't
try to improve our behavior, but improving your behavior,
unless you can do it to the point of perfection, will have nothing
to do with your holiness in the sight of God. That's why the most common name
for believers in the New Testament is the word saint, holy The idea
that somehow or another if you live a good enough life and after
you leave this life you suffer for a while in a kind of semi-hell
until the church thinks that it's appropriate that you be
called a saint, that you be as the, probably from the Latin
word, beatified, glorified as nonsense. Do you believe Christ
this morning? You are a saint. holy brothers who share in the
heavenly calling. You listen to the stock market
and people find the price of the stocks they have, multiply it
by the shares they have. Brethren, we share in a heavenly
calling. We fix our thoughts on Jesus
because the apostle, that is the sent one, He was the one
sent from God to be the Savior of his people. And he's the high
priest whom we confess. There was only one person in
all of Israel who had the right to make atonement in the most
holy place, and that was the high priest. But he had nothing to sacrifice
other than animals. Jesus Christ, our great high
priest, entered in the holy place once for all, not with the blood
of bulls and goats, but with his own blood. And he entered
into the presence of God, offered himself without spot to God. And God accepted his offering
of himself in behalf of all those whose sins he bore. What more do we need? What other
high priest can there be? Who else do we need to help us
into the presence of God if we have Christ Jesus as our high
priest? Says in verse 12, see to it,
brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that
turns away from the living God. When you think about, or when
most people think about, an evil heart, they'll immediately conjure
up a heart that's filled with all manner of transgressions
and wicked thoughts. Well, I won't deny that the heart
is wicked. The heart's deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked. But the chief of all wickedness
and even the foundation of all wickedness is this, unbelief. You, by dent of effort and self-discipline,
might be able to cast off some transgressions. But That still leaves you with
an evil heart of unbelief. And how is that characterized?
It departs from the living God. Now, how do you determine whether
there is in you an evil heart of unbelief? Fix your thoughts on Jesus. How
does that make you feel? What do you think when you see
Christ as he is glorified at the right hand of the Father? What do you think when you see
Jesus high and lifted up and seated upon a throne? How do you respond to the idea
that Jesus Christ is Lord of all and rules all things for
the good of his people? Does that make you glad? Does that make you mad? Do you love the idea of Christ
being exalted above all things, even you? Or does that fill you with envy? and you want a Jesus you can
control. Any Jesus that you can walk away
from is not the real one. If you have ever seen with the
eyes of faith, if you have ever seen the real Jesus Christ, you
will never walk away. You'll stumble, you'll fall.
As the scriptures say, the righteous fall seven times. Not meaning
that between the time you believe and die, you get seven chances. Just means complete failure,
face plant type falling. We do that. But the scriptures
say they always get up. And why is that? Well, not because
they're better than the unrighteous. but because they have seen Christ
with the eyes of faith. And no matter what happens, their
heart cries out, I must have him. I must. He's not an option. He's not
a part of their lives. He is, as Paul wrote, he is our
life. We're told in chapter 4 verse
11 to labor to enter God's rest. That sounds kind of funny. How
do you labor to rest? Ask any believer, they'll tell
you what that means. Because you see, working is written
on our natural heart. Working in order to obtain the
favor of God is inscribed on us as indelibly as the law was
inscribed on those tablets of stone that were given to Moses. Do this and live. That's a summary
of the law right there. Do this and live. That's written
on us. therefore doing is what propels
most religion. And when God is pleased to give
us the light of his glory in the face of Christ and open our
eyes and hearts to the truth of Christ, yes we believe But as that father of the demon-possessed
child says, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Because you
see, the new birth doesn't do anything to the flesh. And there's a part of us that
thinks we need to keep working. And there's a part of us regenerated
by the Spirit of God that says, rest. Jesus Christ said, come
unto me and I will give you rest. And it's hard to do. Oh, fix your thoughts on Jesus.
Labor to enter that rest. If you find yourself laboring
in self-produced righteousness in the hope that by that you
will obtain the favor of God, if you find yourself doing that,
stop that labor and start this labor of entering God's rest,
of allowing no one to convince you your salvation is in any
wise dependent upon how good a person you are. In fact, work,
strive, as the Lord says, to enter in by that narrow gate,
a gate so narrow that that only you can pass through it. You
can't go through with anybody else. You can't go through carrying
your righteousness. You can't get through that gate
hanging on to your church or your religion or the ceremonies
you've done. You can't. There's not room enough.
There's not even room enough for you and your clothes. Because we all dress up in righteousness,
don't we? We cover up the nastiness of
what we are with thin fabric of righteousness that everyone
can see. And like Adam and Eve, we think these self-made clothes
have actually hidden our nakedness from the sight of God. But before
God will ever clothe someone in the righteousness of Jesus
Christ, He's first going to strip him of his own righteousness.
Labor, strive, says the Lord, to enter through that narrow
gate that allows nothing but you to get through. And when you do, you will be
given everything you need. The devil is called the accuser
of the brethren, and he's constantly accusing God's people of their
sins. It's tough work to not fall for it and try to work your
way to glory. Chapter 6, verse 1. He says, therefore, let us leave
the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity,
not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that
lead to death and of faith in God, instruction about baptism,
the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
God permitting, we will do so. Now, he's not saying here that
we are to leave these teachings as not to rehearse them. to ourselves. What he means is, let's quit
arguing about these things as though they're in question. They
aren't. The elementary teachings of Christ, we don't need to keep going back
and refighting that again, especially with regard to those who have
departed from worshiping Christ in order to avoid persecution.
And I believe that that's his primary point. There's no use
chasing after these people, arguing with them about the gospel
points, if the gospel that has been preached
to them for however long they stuck around wasn't able to keep
them. You've got nothing more to say
to them. Now, I don't want to act like
I don't care about people that leave. Breaks my heart. I'm not
saying that leaving this church is leaving the gospel. But when I see people, particularly
when I see this, the Lord seems to save them out of some dark
form of Christianity and brings them into the light of His glorious
Son, and they sit and listen, and then they go back. And I'm usually stunned. What? And the idea is, well, let's
go visit them and present the gospel to them again. or to see
people leave off the regular worship of God, and even though
they profess to keep believing, they kind of put a big question
mark on their profession because they never seem to want to hear
the things they believe. But when I see that, the temptation
is, go out and get them. Tell them the gospel again. Our
Lord gave a the sower and the seed in the
different soils. You know, the same seed was sown
everywhere and it was all good seed. But there was some that was sown
on rocky soil and it came up real quick and then withered.
Some thorny soil, that is there were thorns and whatnot around
and got choked, the seed sprang up and it got choked, and then
there was some that even ended on the pathway that had been
walked on so much, the ground was so hard, the seed couldn't
even take root. And then there was the good soil, and the seed
was sown on that, and it grew and produced a crop. Here's the
thing. While there are different results
in the preaching of the gospel among different people, It's
the same seed, it's good seed, the difference is the soil. And when you have sown the seed
of the gospel, and you find out it gets choked
out, or the ground's so hard it won't receive it, or it's
rocky soil, You can't sow the same seed and expect different
results, because the problem's not the seed, the problem's the
soil. And you'll notice in our Lord's
parable, it never talks about doing anything to the soil. We leave those things, we pray
for them, and if they ever ask those elementary principles,
of course we would rejoice to tell them about them again. But here's the thing about the
Word of God, which is the gospel. It is powerful. It has the power of God behind
it, but if that power is exerted and nothing comes
of it, Then there's no use continually
going back over and over and over, trying to get fruit out
of ground that can't produce it. It says in verse 4, it's impossible
for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted
the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have
tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the
coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance
because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all
over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace. People think
that changing churches, changing messages is a small thing. No,
it's not. to go from the gospel of pure
grace to one that inserts even the least amount of the efforts
of man is to, as it were, crucify Christ again and put him to public
disgrace. Those that do so give indication
they are not of God. And then lastly, chapter 10, verse 19. Therefore, brothers, since we
have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood
of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the
curtain, his body, and since we have a great priest over the
house of God, Let us draw near to God with sincere heart and
full assurance of faith. Eric brought it up, that point
in that psalm, bold. I approach the eternal throne
and claim the victor's crown, because that's the kind of crown
it's talking about, not a king's crown, a victor's crown. Claim
the crown through Christ my own. We may think that it sounds humble
to act as though, yes, we're Christian, but we're such a poor
one, we're going to have to kind of sneak in, or that we'll only
get half blessings. Brethren, if Christ is your high
priest, if he is your righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
you can walk into glory and claim eternal life. as though you yourself
earned it by your own efforts. And no one will be able to stop
you, and God won't stop you, because it's by His work such
boldness comes. Let us draw near to God. Old
covenant believers couldn't do that. Only one of them, the high
priest, only one of them could go into the most holy place. But we, believers in Christ Jesus
and beneficiaries of a new covenant in his blood. Though we are guilty
of countless sins, we know it, yet we don't have to hesitate the
least bit. When the greatest sense of guilt
is upon us, we don't have to cower we don't have to grovel,
we can still come boldly to the throne of grace to find mercy
to help us in our time of need. Why? Because our access to that
throne was not by any works of righteousness which we have done,
and therefore no works of unrighteousness which we have done can ever close
the door to that throne of grace, nor bar us from entry into the
presence of our Father. We may enter with tears, but
we never need to enter with fears. I imagine the high priests of
the old covenant, if they knew much about God at all, it had
to scare them to death on the day of atonement to think they
were going to go back behind that veil where God's token presence
was, the Shekinah glory. And they knew that if they didn't
do the sacrificial work correctly, or if there was something wrong
with the animal, or something was done wrong, they knew they
could be struck dead for being back in there. Not you and me. Our high priest is already gone.
And when he went into the most holy place not made with hands,
the temple veil in Jerusalem was torn in two as a symbol,
as a testimony, to the fact that the way to God had been made
known and that now anyone, anyone who desires the salvation of
God can walk in boldly to that throne of grace. That's what
they were referring to, the throne of grace, what the Ark of the
Covenant stands for. We can go there and we can find
mercy to help us. I galloped over a lot of points
I'd written down because, like I said, any one of those texts
is worthy of a sermon or two all by itself. But brethren,
here's the thing, if I can sum it up this way. Fix your thoughts
on Christ and you'll never have caused fear. You'll never be made to feel
as though you can't come into his presence. have his favor. Never. Fix your eyes on yourself, you'll
be scared to death and you'll want to run. All you'll see is a throne of
judgment, not a throne of grace. Look at other people. They aren't any better than us.
Look at churches, look at ceremonies, look at Look at Christ, always
and only, and you will not fail. Now, may God add his blessing.