I have entitled today's message,
Leave the Shadows, Go on to Perfection. And we want to read from Hebrews
chapter 5. I want to read verse 10 and also in chapter 6 all
the way through to verse 12. I've really appreciated that
exhortation, Ramel. Simple is always better. Considering
the character of the Lord Jesus Christ as you read through scripture
is very important. And you see him, he's unlike
us, isn't he? In our natural condition, we
want to be like him because we find him so attractive in his
grace. Hebrews chapter five from verse
10, it says actually in verse nine, being made perfect, perfect
as our savior, he became the author of eternal salvation unto
all them that obey him. called of God and high priest
after the order of Melchizedek. Now I want to read, before I
read the rest of that scripture, I want to read this hymn. I had
it in the notes last week, but didn't get to it. Consider these
words, which were taken from the 14th verse of Hebrews chapter
four, which says, seeing then that we have a great high priest
that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us
hold fast our profession, And what you see here in Hebrews
is that God is developing the truth for the Hebrews that the
Lord Jesus Christ is our high priest. Very, very important.
In fact, I consider this to be the most important office the
Lord Jesus holds for sinners. Because we cannot come to God
without a high priest. And we cannot come as sinners
to God unless there's a high priest to deal with our sins.
God word. And to bring the good news of
that and give us access to God through him. But here we have
this hymn from this consideration of the Lord Jesus as our high
priest. Jesus, my great high priest, offered his blood and
died My guilty conscience seeks no sacrifice beside. His powerful
blood did once atone, and now it pleads before the throne.
When you read these hymns or when you sing these hymns, these
are people like you and me who have taken to themselves the
truth of Scripture by God-given faith and live upon it in the
exercise of it which is why I'm pointing these things out, because
that's the subject of our scripture today. And what you hear in their
words of their songs, like here, the song we just sang, is there's
this constant attention to Christ. his offices, his work for us,
our blessings in him. The second verse of this hymn
goes, to this dear savior's hand, I do commit my cause. He answers
and fulfills his father's broken laws. Behold, my soul at freedom
set, my surety paid the dreadful debt. My advocate appears for
my defense on high. The father bows his ears. and
lays his thunder by. Not all that hell or sin can
say shall turn his heart, his love, away. Isn't that comforting? That's Romans 8, isn't it? Nothing
can separate us from the love of God. Should all the hosts
of death and powers of hell unknown put their most dreadful forms
of rage and mischief on, I shall be safe, for Christ displays
his conquering power and guardian grace. So we have these words by not an inspired writer, but
nevertheless a writer who understood the inspiration of Scripture.
The Lord Jesus Christ in chapter 5 was developed to show that
he qualifies as our High Priest as Aaron was made a High Priest
because he fits the role of High Priest in offering for our sins
because he was called of God and made a High Priest because
he has compassion on us. And because he is our eternal
savior, he is our successful high priest. As we saw in verse
nine, being made perfect, he became the author of eternal
salvation. Therefore, he is a very suitable high priest. And so
we see that the Lord Jesus Christ in chapter five of Hebrews matches
the typical high priesthood that Aaron and his sons played, the
role that they played. Christ fulfills that. But it
doesn't stop there, because the Lord Jesus was not made a priest
after the order of Aaron, but he was made a priest, a high
priest, after the order of Melchizedek. And the author to the Hebrews
is anxious, very excited, about explaining to us the Lord Jesus
Christ in this role of high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
But his excitement has to be delayed. He has to hold back,
because he has to correct the Hebrews. And correction is part
of the ministry of the gospel. And in the book of Hebrews, there
are several warnings and corrections given. Remember, in Hebrews chapter
2, verse 1, he says, we ought to give the more earnest heed
to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let
them slip For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and
every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of
reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation,
which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed
to us by them that heard him? There's a warning, isn't it?
Don't let slip the gospel you've heard. It's the Lord's word. It's heaven's good news to sinners.
Then in chapter three, we saw warnings again, when he said,
today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in
the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness,
when your fathers tempted me and proved me and saw my works
40 years. There, he's exhorting us and warning us to take heed,
lest there be in any of us an evil heart of unbelief and departing
from the living God. And he gives us this practical,
thing to do. He says, but exhort one another
daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through
the deceitfulness of sin. So there's a warning and there's
a remedy. Exhort one another daily. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ when you hear the gospel. And then
in chapter four we saw the warning of how We must labor to enter
into this rest because the word of God is living, powerful, sharper
than any two-edged sword. It pierces even to the dividing
asunder of soul and spirit and joints and marrow and it makes
known, it discerns the thoughts and intents of our hearts. And
there's no creature that is not manifest in his sight. All things
are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have
to do. Now that's a warning. But notice what those warnings
ultimately are used by the writer to the Hebrews to do. What does
he do with those warnings? What does he do with those exhortations?
Well, he says here in Hebrews 4.14, seeing then that we have
a great high priest that has passed into the heavens, Jesus,
the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not
an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities, but was in all points tempted like we are. Yet without
sin, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we
may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. We face
the all-seeing eye of God's Word that divides and discerns between
our motives, the thoughts of our heart. Therefore, we need
to labor to enter into this rest, this salvation that's in Christ
alone, and give diligence to it, and come to the throne of
grace to find grace in every time of need, you see. So the
warnings always point us to Christ. That's what the oppression of
the law does to a sinner. It brings us to Christ. All of
history up until the time of the gospel under the law was
to hold us as a schoolmaster under the tutelage and the discipline
of the law in order to shut us up in the prison of our sin and
helplessness until Christ was revealed. And this is the message
of all of the New Testament. And it's the message of the Old
Testament also to direct us into the way of grace in Christ. When
you read the Sermon on the Mount, I was thinking about this the
other day. And when Rommel said that they
were reading through Matthew in their family worship time,
that in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus Christ shows us
what God requires of us. And then he shows us the only
place where those needs can be met. It's in him. When Jesus
said, I didn't come to destroy the law and the prophets, but
I came to fulfill them. He's the one who fulfills it.
And so we find that the stress of God's Word in the warnings
and the exhortations and even stirring up our fears of facing
God in judgment all are intended to drive us to the Lord Jesus
Christ and salvation by grace because of Him. And so now what
we're looking at in Hebrews chapter 5 at the end is that the apostle
who's writing to the Hebrews here is going to, he's about
to launch into this beautiful explanation of Christ as our
high priest after the order of Melchizedek and all that means
to us. But he realizes that the people
to whom he's writing are dull of hearing. And so he has to
pause and he has to warn them and exhort them again. He has
to discipline them, bring chastisement on them through the word, through
an exhortation. And this happens throughout Hebrews.
Chapter 10 does it. Chapter 12 does it. And it's
throughout because the good news of the gospel is always complemented
with the bad news of our sin and our propensity to be neglectful,
to let slip, to not believe God, to accuse him of wrong when he's
the one that's right and we're the one that's wrong, all these
things. And to take some presumptuous thoughts of our lives. But God works through these means.
When you heard that reading from Luke 19 about Zacchaeus, did
you notice how God's grace worked in his life? He was a wee little
man, a little man, short of stature. So what did he do? He climbed
up into a sycamore tree. That was the means God used to
bring him to the place where Jesus would come and he would
see Jesus and the Lord would tell him, come down, come down. I must abide at your house today.
So that's the way the gospel works. It comes to us, it stirs
up that hunger and thirst for righteousness before God because
we lack all righteousness. And stirring that up, it drives
us like the deer to pant. for the Lord Jesus Christ and
his righteousness. And so that's what the writer
to the Hebrews is doing here. And we shouldn't resist the probings
of God's word in our hearts that leave us unsettled. We should
welcome them because we need to be unsettled. Only an unsettled
sinner will delight in the gospel good news of Christ. So, let's
read on. Hebrews chapter 5, verse 11. Speaking of Christ and Melchizedek,
he says, of whom we have many things to say. Now, let's just
use that phrase for a minute here. Because to understand,
a lot of people have said the book of Hebrews is too hard to
understand. Well, it is hard to understand.
In fact, it's impossible, just like the rest of Scripture, to
understand unless God opens it to us. So that's why he says,
this will we do if God permit. He knows that he depends on the
Lord to do this. He's about to explain this. The
point I want to make here is that in order to understand all
that's about to be said here and throughout Hebrews and the
rest of the New Testament and the Old Testament, we have to
remember what is the message of Scripture. What was the message
of the Old Testament? What was it that Jesus himself
explained that message? What was the message he explained
from the Old Testament? And what does he tell us here
in this book, and in Galatians, and in Romans, and in all the
New Testament? What is the message? It's Christ
and Him crucified, right? If we see this, then the rest
of it will fall into place. But if we miss this, then we'll
dive into the details and we'll completely miss the picture that
those details are meant to give to us. We will miss the whole
explanation because we're down at some level of trying to define
the Greek meaning of a word. or a phrase, and we'll lose it
because we will not see that the message of scripture is that
my salvation as a sinner is by God's grace alone because of
Christ alone. And I, as a sinner, see that,
enter into it, and receive the blessings of it in my own experience
by faith alone. from God's word alone. And these
are the basic, this is the teaching of the New Testament. It's not
by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to
his mercy that he saved us. We want to understand why I'm
saved. How is it that I became, came
to be called your son, Lord? How is it that I have found this
desire to be found in Christ alone? Where did this come from?
came from God. It was the operation of His grace.
Salvation is by grace alone. That's the message of Scripture.
It's in Christ alone. So when we see this, we understand
that the rider to the Hebrews is driving these Hebrews to Christ. And if we see that, then the
rest of it will make sense. But if we miss that, then the
rest of it will be off in the weeds somewhere. So notice in
verse 11, of whom we have many things to say. He's directing
us to Christ, but yet it's hard to be uttered seeing you're dull
of hearing. You've heard it, it's like when
I would sit at work and the fan of the instrument would be on
and it would be on for hours and you don't even realize it's
on until somehow the power goes off or you shut it off and it's
quiet. And you didn't realize there was this background noise
troubling you. The Hebrews, these people to
whom this book was written, they knew the Old Testament as under
the old covenant, that covenant of works. They knew it. They
knew what it was to strive to obey God's law. They knew what
it was to trust in their own obedience in order to find favor
with God and gain his blessings. And they understood clearly what
it meant to receive cursing. and chastisement from God for
disobedience. They knew those things. They
understood the priesthood, the services, the tabernacle. They
understood their history. They understood those things.
And it always drove them back to that old covenant. But when
they heard the gospel of Christ and Him crucified, and these
Hebrews did hear that, they latched on to it. But it had been some
time They had suffered affliction. They had become companions of
the apostle who was in prison. And they had suffered the loss
of their goods. They had suffered for the gospel that they held
to and that they professed. But they had grown dull of hearing
because of all the people who heard the gospel, the Hebrews
had the Old Testament and understood, at least, what it was saying
and were familiar with it, and they should have, therefore,
become teachers, understanding Christ from the Old Testament,
and they failed. They fell short of that. So in
their own lives, though they had trusted Christ, they were
living at a distance. They weren't making use. They
weren't taking the things that they had heard and making use
of them in their everyday meditations, in their prayers, in their exhortations
to one another. They had become dull of hearing. They had become like a sound,
a background sound constantly going without realizing that
they had become insensitive to it. They had lost their love
for it. And so when the writer to the
Hebrews, what he's about to do here, he had set forth Christ
before them as the high priest. We need a high priest. You see
the danger we're in, our wicked hearts in light of God's holy
word and our need to enter into the rest, which we can only enter
by grace in trusting Christ. When they saw all that, They
were being driven by the writer to the Hebrews to see that the
whole priesthood and the whole covenant of that old covenant
was going to be done away. In fact, God had determined to
put it away in Christ who would fulfill the priesthood of Melchizedek
and therefore bring in a new law, the gospel. But he couldn't
say that because they had lost their view that the Old Testament
spoke of Christ. They had lost this. They weren't
exercising the grace God had given them in faith, depending
upon Him in their daily lives, meditating on that grace as sinners,
seeing that their salvation was all by God's grace in Christ.
So they weren't driven back to the Old Testament to find God's
word giving them warrant. to know that their salvation
was in Him alone, that all they had trusted in before and practiced
before was only meant to bring them to Christ. They had lost
that. So they were dull of hearing.
And what the writer is going to do is he's going to take the
Old Testament to prove Christ has fulfilled it and therefore
it has necessarily been laid aside. It's no longer needed,
but for the purpose of pointing us to Christ. Remember what Jesus
told the two on the road to Emmaus, and then as he unfolded the scriptures
to them, and then as he also saw the other apostles back in
Luke 24? Let me read this to you. Take
you to a couple of scriptures here. Because we need to be grounded,
as we look into these words so that we'll see the point that
we're being driven to. In Luke chapter 24, they were
rehearsing the two on the road to Emmaus. In verse 21 of Luke
24, we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed
Israel. He's still telling this to Jesus. And beside all this,
Today is the third day since these things were done. Yea,
and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which
were early at the sepulchre. And when they found not his body,
they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels,
which said he was alive. And certain of them which were
with us went to the sepulchre and found it, even as the woman
had said. But him they saw not. Then Jesus
said to them, O fools, and slow of heart, that sounds like the
same thing, you're dull of hearing. Fools and slow of heart to believe
all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered
these things and to enter into his glory? He interprets all
of the Old Testament. in these two things, the sufferings
of Christ and the glory that should follow. That's what 1
Peter 1, verse 9 and 10 say. So he says, ought not Christ
to have suffered these things and enter into his glory? That's
what the law and the prophets are telling us. And beginning
at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all
the scriptures the things concerning himself. And now look at verse
44, the same chapter. This is another setting, the
other disciples are there. And Jesus said to them, these
are the words which I spoke to you while I was with you, that
all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law
of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning
me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the
scriptures. And he said to them, thus it
is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise
from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission
of sin should be preached in his name among all nations beginning
in Jerusalem. And look also at John chapter
five. These things, this is the way things are. This is the truth
of scripture. John 5, verse 39, he says to
the Pharisees, search the scriptures, for in them you think you have
eternal life by what you do, and they are they which testify
of me, and you will not come to me that you might have life. Verse 46, had you believed Moses,
had you believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote
of me. Now, back to the book of Hebrews.
Look at chapter 10, verse 4. It is not possible that the blood
of bulls and goats should take away sins. Wherefore, when he
cometh into the world, Christ, he saith, Sacrifice an offering
thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt
offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.
Then said I," listen carefully, "'Lo, I come in the volume of
the book. It is written of me to do thy
will, O God.'" You see how the Lord does it? He sets before
us life. He shows us our sin, and that
life is in His Son, and He points us to Him unrelentingly. But yet, we can grow dull of
hearing when the Hebrews read the Old Testament scriptures.
They could think of legal requirements. They felt legal bondage. They found conditional promises
and conditional blessings. They heard of an earthly land
and an earthly inheritance, of a city on earth called Jerusalem,
and a religious process and ceremonies and laws. And that's as far as
they went. Then they were dull of hearing.
They were fools. Christ had spoken to those two
on the road to Emmaus, and yet they hadn't yet seen because
it hadn't been open to them. And so he's going to open now
to the Hebrews Christ's fulfillment of the Old Testament in detail
concerning Melchizedek, a great mystery yet unfolded. But before he does, he gives
this warning, this exhortation. Verse 12, Hebrews 5, verse 12. For when for the time you ought
to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again, which
be the first principles of the oracles of God, and are become
such as have need of milk and not of strong meat. They should
have been teachers by this point. They had the Old Testament. They
had heard the gospel of Christ. They had suffered affliction,
lost their goods because they identified with those who suffered
for the gospel. Many things they had done. They
had, in chapter six, he said, God is not unrighteous to forget
your work and labor of love. So they were already doing these
things, and yet they failed to see Christ in all of scripture.
And that's why he says you ought to be teachers. And yet you're
stuck on milk, this basic stuff that the Old Testament teaches,
which he's going to enumerate in chapter six. He says, for everyone that useth
milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is a
babe. The Apostle Peter says, as newborn
babes desire the sincere milk of the word, And he's talking
about the gospel. The milk he's talking about here
are the Old Testament shadows and types and laws, those historical
things that happened to Israel. But he says, everyone that uses
that kind of milk, those rudimentary things that are only figures
and types of Christ, is unskillful in the word of righteousness.
The word of righteousness is the word of the gospel in which
the righteousness of Christ, which is the righteousness of
God, is fulfilled and given to us by his work. They're unskillful
in that. Verse 14, but strong meat belongeth
to them that are of full age, even those, listen, who by reason
of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. The good and evil, he's telling
them they need to discern between, is the true doctrine of scripture,
which is Christ. How many sermons have you heard
or teachings have you heard in today's churches which don't
deal with Christ? They talk about the end times.
They talk about church government. They talk about our behavior
as parents and children, how we ought to be upright in these
different ways. And all those things have their
place. But the body, as scripture says, is of Christ. The truth
is in Christ. It all has to come to him. He's the one of whom the scriptures
speak, the Psalms, the prophets, Moses, all of the New Testament. And it's necessary when we read
the gospels, we're following Jesus through his life. We're
hearing his words. We're seeing how sinners came
to him and how he dealt with sinners and how he dealt with
the self-righteous. And so we're able, in seeing
Christ, to discern between the true and the false, between the
good and the evil. Satan tempted Eve by trying to
get her to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. But in Romans chapter 3, it says, by the law comes the
knowledge of good and evil. But it's only in seeing Christ
that we actually come to the truth of His grace. Grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ. So we have to go on. And this
is, their fault here is they were not making use. It says,
men are exercised because of reason of use. They have their
senses exercised. Now, we know what exercise is,
don't we? And it's kind of helpful to use
it as an illustration. When you feel kind of lethargic
or when you feel like your health is waning and you're kind of
in the doldrums in terms of your physical health and feelings,
It turns out that you can actually feel a lot better if you exercise. And so, you know what it is today. You'll see some pretty person,
a handsome man or a beautiful woman, and they're exercising. Look, look at the picture of
this person here. And then another picture, they're doing some kind
of exercise. And so you feel inspired, man.
I could look and feel like they do if I just did what they did.
And so you think about that. So you set the pattern, you get
up, and you do something. You decide, I'm going to go for
a walk 15 minutes every week. Or maybe you're aggressive. Maybe
you're one of those peak performers. So you're going to do a lot of
weight lifting and run a couple miles a day or something. You
set your goal, and you start out. You get all sore and wore
out. You go back and look at the picture.
See, they did it. They're my age. So you get back
in there, and you start working at it. Over a course of time,
you get past the soreness. You begin to feel a little better,
a little stronger. And you're encouraged by it.
Because you saw the benefit of this exercise, and you felt the
benefits of it, you were reassured in that, and you began to pursue
it. And you began to be, the more
benefit you saw, the more diligent you became. Well, this is the
same principle here. When God, by his grace, shows
us the gospel, when he shows us our sin and our helplessness,
and we see that our salvation is in Christ, and we immediately
cry out to God in thankfulness, and then we see our sin more,
and we cry out for him to save us, this is the exercise of grace
in our life. Faith is the way we live, because
by God's grace, we've begun, we believe Christ, and we're
walking with him. And if we don't do that, if we
neglect that, then we get weak and we don't feel good spiritually. But as we diligently pursue Christ
to be found in him, to know him, then we're assured in that process
God ministers to us more grace. Faith comes not by sitting on
the couch, but by hearing the word of God. I'm using those
two, the illustration and the spiritual application interchangeably
here. If we just sit on the couch,
our muscles atrophy. If we hear the word of God in
a spiritual sense, then our faith is increased because that's the
way faith comes. So what should we do? Well, by
reason of use means that How did you begin as a believer? Well, God showed to you the wonders
of Christ to you as a sinner, and it overwhelmed you with an
appreciation for God's grace and kindness to you and his mercy. And it gave you confidence in
Christ, because you saw that it's what God thinks of him that
made a difference between you and him. God took the initiative. God obligated himself. And you
see the goodness of God. And you begin to trust him. You
begin to come to him and cry to him, even in your sin. You
don't hide anymore, because you see that he knows you. And he
died for you when you were yet a sinner. And when you were the
enemy of God, he reconciled to you through the death of his
son. And all these things are gathered up in your mind and
your thoughts, and you begin to work them out in the way you
interact in your heart with God. You're making use. By reason
of use, you're taking those things in, and you're living upon Christ
by faith. Jesus said, whoever eats my flesh
and drinks my blood shall dwell in me, and I will dwell in him.
We're constantly feeding on him. He's in me. Paul said, the life
I now live, I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me
and gave himself for me. This is the way a believer lives
their life. But we can grow presumptuous, or we can get off in the weeds.
I know a lot of people who will spend all their time talking
to you about the sovereignty of God, and God is sovereign.
But Christ, Christ is the center and circumference of all of the
truth of God. Yes, Christ is sovereign, but
sovereignty in itself is not the point. It's Christ and Him
crucified, you see. So don't get hung up on the sovereignty
of God and miss Christ, because you can do that. and we should
walk by faith as a sinner coming to Christ at all times. That's
the reason of use. We search the scriptures because
we see the threatenings of God against sinners, knowing ourselves
to be deceitful and corrupt, and what do we do? We flee to
Christ. Lord, find me in him. I need to be saved. Lord, as
Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 17, heal me and I shall be healed.
Save me and I shall be saved. Don't be a terror to me. You
are my trust in a day of evil. That's what Jeremiah poured his
heart out. And he said, a glorious high throne is the place of our
sanctuary. So he was trusting in Christ,
the one who overcame his sin and death, and now sits on heaven's
throne to save those who come to God by him, save them to the
uttermost by reason of use. Now, I want to go on here. He
says, you ought to be teachers. They weren't teachers, but they
should have been. They weren't ready to hear that
the priesthood of Aaron was done away in Christ, and that the
Old Testament, the old covenant of works, and all the outward
services of the tabernacle, and the priesthood, and the laws
of God that they trusted in, all that was fulfilled in Christ,
and therefore they needed to forsake it, as their religion,
and they needed to find everything in Christ to live upon Him with
nothing, an invisible truth, a truth they could hold on to
by faith alone, but they could not see. Whereas the tabernacle
was obviously visible, they had a veil and an altar and all these
things. And they were accepted in that religion. They were used
to it. The people in the city, in the
country they lived in, they approved of it. Now they were swimming
upstream against the grain saying, no, all the visible stuff is
unimportant now. It's useless because Christ,
my high priest, is in heaven. He's the king. And so he goes
on, he says, in Hebrews chapter six, I wanna go jump ahead before
we cover the first few verses next time, I wanna jump ahead.
He says in verse 11, and we desire that every one of you do show
the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end
that you be not slothful, but followers of them who through
faith and patience inherit the promises. Now, let's consider
those two verses. There's five things the Lord
tells us to do here, five things. First of all, we desire that
every one of you to show the same diligence. You know what
diligence is? It's sticking to it. It's an
earnest, energetic pursuit. It's standing firm. It's going on. He says, this
is the first thing we need to do, to be diligent. Diligence
is something that the Bible teaches. And do you know how you learn
diligence as a child? Your mom and dad make you do
things you don't want to do. When you don't want to do them,
get up every morning and before you leave your bedroom, I want
you to make your bed. I just left it unmade. No, go back in,
you're not having breakfast until your bed is made. You know, whatever
your parents say. I'm not saying that that's necessary
if you don't teach your kids that particular thing. But the
point here is that as a child you learn diligence because your
mom and dad make you do things you don't want to do when you
don't want to do them. So you have to do it. When you don't
feel like it, you have to do it anyway. So when you get older,
you're now 40 years old, and you get up in the morning and
you go to work. No one's telling you to, except you know that
if you don't, you're gonna lose your job. So you're diligent
in that. And there's other ways you can
be diligent. He's saying that he desires that every one of
you, every one of you do show the same diligence. Diligence
not in these physical things, but diligence in our pursuit
of Christ. Diligence to be found in Him,
saved by His grace, knowing that we must have His grace to live,
to be kept, to be perfected, to be brought to glory, and going
to Him and depending on it. How does this spiritual sustenance
come to us? Well, as I said before, it's
through the Word of God. It's by, Jesus said, he who eats my
flesh and drinks my blood, he lives in me and I live in him.
That's the way we have fellowship with, that's the way we draw
strength from him. Faith comes by hearing, hearing
by the word of God. So what do we do? In our lives,
we want to make ourselves available to hear the gospel so that God
would be pleased to bless us in hearing the gospel so that
the faith he's given us would increase. The disciples prayed
that, Lord increase our faith. The father prayed that, whose
son was possessed or dying, I can't remember which, I believe, help
my unbelief. Faith is God's gift. Faith is
the result of God's increasing. It has to be all of God. And
how does it happen? Well, like Zacchaeus, he climbed
up in the tree to see Jesus. He didn't want to miss him. I
was talking to my brother on the phone the other day. He says,
there's so many times I don't feel like going to hear the preacher. And then I go and I hear the
gospel and I'm so blessed. And I think, how would I have
ever not come And that's the way it is in our life. We have
to diligently pursue what we know to be true. If the world
is passing away and Christ is the most important thing, our
number one and two and third priority, then we're going to
make it so. We're going to be diligent in
pursuing him. And then he goes on, that's the first thing. You
would show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope. The second thing he exhorts us
to do is to seek assurance in Christ, the full assurance of
hope. Isn't assurance a strengthening
thing? You can't function as a believer
unless you're assured that God has received you for Christ's
sake, blesses you for Christ's sake, and gives everything to
you for Christ's sake. But we don't have that assurance
unless we make ourselves available to the gospel, crying to the
Lord in our lives for His saving grace. Heal me, Lord, and I shall
be healed. Save me, and I shall be saved.
This constant dependence upon Him, and it leads to an assurance.
We have this assurance when we are taking in Christ, because
we see that God's salvation is in Him, and He can't fail because
of Him. He can't fail. So we're assured. And that hope, that full assurance
of hope, enables us to endure all kinds of trouble. Even the
loss of our life in persecution, or even that patient endurance
like Abraham did, waiting for Isaac to be born, knowing Christ
would come through him, and God would save his people through
Christ. He patiently endured, trusting that God would keep
his word. He was able to do that. So he was assured. And then he
says, full assurance of hope to the end. In other words, you
have to persevere. You have to continue in this
grace of faith. And where is perseverance gonna
come from? He that has begun a good work in you will complete
it until the day of Christ Jesus. We go to God for everything he
requires from us. Go to his throne of grace. We
must continue to believe, and that will only happen if God
upholds us. Verse 12. that you be not slothful. In other words, you watch against
laziness. We need to watch against a presumptuous
attitude. The Lord's going to take care
of it. So we seldom pray. We seldom find ourselves, Lord,
if you don't save me, I'm lost. We don't do that because we just
live our lives. going to work, coming home, going
to bed, getting up, going to work, coming home, whatever it
is, enjoying the everyday things of life just like the world does.
But our life is Christ, isn't it? He is our life. And so we
live that way. Don't be slothful. But followers,
here it tells us the fifth thing, imitate those who, it says, through
faith and patience, inherit the promises. Promises aren't conditioned
on us. promises are conditioned on God
alone who made the promises. But in His grace towards us,
He gives us this grace of faith and hope to persevere, to seek
the assurance that's in Christ alone, and to give all diligence
to be found in Him. And it never stops. Sin is always
In us, our sinful nature is always opposing the truth of the gospel. And so we have to avail ourselves
of it. And the more we make the gospel our meditation, the more
we find our hope of salvation through life and in glory to
be all of Christ, and we find God's word, we're going to hunger
and thirst even more for it. It's like I was telling Denise
this morning, I got up, I ate late last night, and went to
bed, and I got up hungrier this morning. Why is that? But when
I normally have a longer time between eating dinner and getting
up in the morning, I'm not so hungry. I don't know, I don't
understand the biology of it, but I do see the spiritual thing
of it. The more you take Christ in,
the more you want to take him in. And that's just the principle. So if you find yourself uninterested
and neglectful, what's the solution? You need to eat more, right?
You need to go to God for that grace. I need more of Christ. I feel myself slipping. Let me
read this text from Psalm 94, verse 17, Psalm 94. Unless the
Lord had been my help. And this is the attitude of someone
saved by grace. Look. Look, the believer says
this to a fellow believer, look, I'm looking back at my life and
I'm seeing that I was saved entirely by the grace of God. My first
inclination, my first interest in Christ, the sense of my lostness
and my helplessness, and then the sense of confidence in Christ
and the assurance of complete and finished and perfect salvation
in Him, all those things came to me by God's grace alone. And
so here he says, unless the Lord had been my help, my soul had
almost dwelt in silence. When I said, my foot slippeth,
thy mercy, O Lord, held me up. In the multitude of my thoughts
within me, thy comforts delight my soul. You see, this is making
use. grace through faith, making use
of salvation in Christ, and searching this, is it really true that
God accepts me for Christ's sake? Is it really true that the Lord
Jesus Christ is a substitute for sinners like me, and that
I can be saved by him, and that he has actually saved me? Is
it true? What do we do? I don't know where
it's found. I gotta find it. And we begin
to listen. You drive to work, turn on a
sermon. You pray. Lord, you shut off
the sermon and you pray. You go for a walk and you don't
hold anything back. You rend your heart. Lord, this
is my case. I need your saving grace to keep
me, to find me, to bring me, to hold me, to make me know that
Christ is my all. That's that due diligence. And
he says, I desire that every one of you do show the same diligence.
One, to the full assurance. Two, of hope to the end. Three,
that you be not slothful. Four, and that you be imitators
and followers of those who through faith and patience inherit the
promises. And you can look at this throughout scripture. Look
at Paul's race that he ran, and what did he say? It was not I,
but the grace of God in me, right? And Thomas, Lord, I won't believe
until I see. Oh, I see now, you are my Lord,
you are my God. And we reflect on those things,
the thief on the cross or whoever it is, we see ourselves in it. And God wants us to see Christ
in all of scripture and see our salvation in him alone by his
grace alone. and not interpret the Old Testament
or the Sermon on the Mount or the New Testament either in terms
of these things that aren't important, that they're somehow connected,
but they're not Christ and Him crucified. And if you hear the
preaching and teaching of a sermon and it doesn't bring you to Christ,
then you've missed it. That sermon has missed it. We
need to find him. So find your favorite preacher
on Sermon Audio who will faithfully bring you to Christ in your heart.
and cause you to cling to him and go to the throne of grace
at all times and say, Lord, heal me and I shall be healed. Save
me and I shall be saved. Until you turned me, Lord, I
was not turned. But you've turned me. You've
made me to see Christ as my all. How we need this, how we pray
this for our children. We don't want, he says, each
one of you, each one of you in this text of scripture. That
means each one of us. Someone else doesn't live our
life for us. Whether we're children or adults, we have to find ourselves
in Christ. Let's pray. Lord, help us to go beyond the
shadows. to the substance, to the Lord
Jesus, to perfection in him. Help us to find ourselves perfected
only and fully by his one offering of himself to God for his people.
Help us to see our high priest in heaven who reigns over all
to bring us and to use all things in life and to provide for us
in providence itself, all details of our life, that he might save
us to the uttermost. And we know, Lord, that you work
through these means of hunger and thirst in our souls, desire
to be diligent in pursuing after you like one whose life depends
upon finding Christ to be all. Help us to search diligently
and find your promises and to rest upon them, and pray to you
concerning them, and to walk in life looking for them. We
pray, Lord, that this would be our life, that everything else
we see, we wouldn't look for solutions from this world. We
wouldn't look for a Savior with all the troubles of this world,
in this world, but we would look to the throne of grace for everything. We know our Savior is our High
Priest and King, and He will deliver us. and we trust Him
to do so, but we call upon Him to do so according to Your grace. And this is the work that You've
done. And so we pray that You would take glory to Yourself
for Your work and operations in our lives. We pray, Lord,
don't leave us dull of hearing, but bring us to see again and
again and again and again the Lord Jesus Christ as our all.
In His name we pray. Amen.