If not, it's okay. We're not
going to rush. Let's read together verses 19
through the end again. Chapter 10, Hebrews 19 through
39. 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
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 who 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. 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 who so treated. For
you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted
the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves
had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore, do not
throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have
need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God,
you may receive what is promised. For, quote, yet a little while
and the coming one will come and not delay, but by righteous
one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul
has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink
back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve
their souls. So here we see Paul continuing
in his argument about the confidence that comes through the finished
work of Christ that is continually at work for us because it is
a finished work. Friends, we need to remember
that, as I say, and I know it may seem redundant, but we need
to remember as we read these things that Paul is truly teaching
these Jewish Christians that they should have great confidence
in the finished work of Christ. That they should know that they
have eternal life because of what Christ did. Not because of what they did
with what Christ did, not because of what they think about what
Christ did, but because of what Christ did. This is the essence
of what faith does. It believes on the one who did.
And as we'll see in the weeks to come as we continue in this
letter, faith is something that is absolutely certain. So when
we think of our confidence, when we think of our assurance, we've
seen Paul paint these pictures of being able to walk into the
presence of God like a small child into the presence of their
father with no fear of condemnation, with a greeting no matter what
had taken place before or whatever the occasion might be to be in
the presence of their father, that the child does not tremble,
the child does not hide, the child does not run away, yet
it goes into the place where their father is. It's always
been the problem, or one problem, of many having children as a
pastor. Because the premises of worship,
the premises of assembly, often become like a secondary playground.
And many of you have experienced that. My children have always
been very comfortable in the presence of the church building.
They've always been very comfortable in places where you typically
wouldn't go. They've always been very comfortable
singing on the equipment on Thursday afternoons or Saturday mornings
during cleanings. They've always been comfortable
doing whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want,
in any corner of any property that we've ever had under our
care. And that comes in some way a little problematic when
Sunday shows up and they're wanting to shoot jelly beans out of straws
across the stage or, well we did it last week, well you can't
do it today. Well why is it that we can do
that then and can't do it now? Well because there's a sense
of order that we're trying to establish. Nothing spiritual.
I remember at one time preaching in front of a very large gathering
and out of nowhere here comes one of my children. And it was
grace and she came down the stage and climbed up on the stage and
just walked up to me in front of thousands of people and just
picked her up and held her and just continued to preach. In
her mind, this is my building, that's my daddy, I'm going up
there. Yet in the mind of many it was inappropriate. Yet it
was a good teaching lesson. That's how we approach our Father.
That's how we approach the Father of Lights, the Father of Majesty,
our God, our Creator. That's how we approach Him. Why?
Because the blood of Jesus Christ has satisfied Him. He doesn't
look at us in any way except justified through the Lord Jesus.
So we have confidence. We don't have to worry. We don't
have to fear. We don't have to debate. Should
I go in? Should I not? We are in the presence of God.
We boldly go there or we shrink back in fear. These are the two
extremes. And one extreme is a biblical promise through the
declaration of the gospel, the good news that Christ has accomplished
and opened the way to us to God. That doesn't mean that we throw
caution to the wind and that God is our big buddy. It doesn't
mean that the Lord Jesus Christ is our fishing friend. But it
does mean that we have access in that same way intimately as
little children do with their parents. Yet the antithesis of that is
a shrinking back in fear. We'll see that in some other
ways in scripture where we see John's apocalypse where it talks
about those who, when the presence of God manifests, they decide
to try to hide in caves. And this is the imagery, it's
not the literal situation happening. There are no caves in Plaxton,
so of course we're not hiding in caves. But we do try to hide
ourselves from the presence of God, from the eyes of God. And
we see the expression sometimes in John's Apocalypse where they
would say, they would pray that the mountains would throw themselves
on top of them, that they would be hidden under the core or that
the sea would swaddle them up so they could not be found. But
there's nowhere that can hide. There's nowhere that one could
hide from the eyes and the gaze, the Coram Deo, the face of God. No one can hide from God. And
beloved, the children of God don't want to hide from Him.
They do not want to disappear and to cover themselves in fig
leaves. They do not want to try to find another way to which
they could establish a good standing before their Father. For Christ
is the only way and He has done the work and the establishing
of His children justified, holy, sanctified, set apart, perfect,
chosen, loved, washed, cleaned. You see the picture that Paul
paints here in Hebrews. It has been done through the blood and
the body of Jesus. Sometimes we have a hermeneutical
error when we read things and we read them like I read verses
19 through 25 as we began tonight. And as we see this illustration
We have confidence to enter into the presence of God through the
blood of Christ, the new and living way, the curtain that
is His flesh. And He is the eternal and only
true high priest who looks over the house of God. We are the
house of God. We are the household of God.
We are the children of God. So because of that, let us draw
near with full assurance, with confidence. And listen to the
imagery here. 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. This is not a theological treatise
to be unpacked in a way where we understand. Now, what does
an evil conscience look like? What does a heart of full assurance
look like? And what does he really mean
there when he talks about a heart sprinkled clean and then a body
washed with pure water? Well, just listen to it. I even mentioned this last week.
The preparation for worship, the preparation to walk into
the presence of God without the Lamb of God is always death. And no matter how clean we get,
we're never going to feel clean. We're never going to be clean.
We're never going to expressly lay down at night and go, Oh
Lord, I washed so well. Don't you see? No, we will not. But this idea that Paul establishes
in the reading of this text, And his letter to these beloved
saints who are sealed by the precious promise of God, he says,
you're clean. Your bodies are clean. Now imagine
when Jesus begins to wash the feet of the disciples. Remember
what we learned there in John's Gospel. And he takes off his
clothes and his outer garments and he has his whatever covers
his loins and he puts a towel around himself and he gets down
in the ground and it makes them, I mean, they're aghast. They're aghast for two reasons.
One is that that is a very subservient thing to do. It is a very subservient
thing to do. And it's such a terrible thing
to do in the context of the first century that a slave who was
also of Jewish descent was not permitted to wash feet. It was
beneath even the slave of Jews. So it had to be a Gentile slave
to wash the feet in a Jewish household. And here is the king of kings
and the Lord of lords, the master of all things. disrobing, which
is humiliating enough, and then getting on his feet and washing,
getting off on his knees and washing the feet of filthy men. And Peter refuses, doesn't he?
No, no, no, no. I shall have no part of this.
I shall not let you. I should be me washing your feet.
At least he had the right idea. Let me be your servant. And Jesus says, if I do not wash
you, you have no part of me. You have nothing. You are not
with me. If I do not wash you, you will
not be in me. And what does Peter say? Here's
my hands then. Here's my head. Just wash me
all over. And that's exactly what he did. And immediately
after that, they begin to do the Seder. They begin to take
the Passover meal. And Jesus in that moment takes,
when the time is right, the bread and the wine and where it would
be symbolic of the shadow of what He would do. He then shares
with them that while I washed your feet, it expresses the attitude
of what it means to be a righteous man. Though I was God, I did
not demand you to worship me and wash my feet. I became nothing,
worse than a slave, and I washed your feet. Now let me show you
what it really looks like in a spiritual sense. In the courtroom
of heaven, where God Almighty Himself would judge the nations,
where you could not stand unless I wash you. And it's much more
than washing your hands and your head and your feet that's going
to be required. My blood must spill out, my body must be broken
and in doing so I'm going to clean you in a way that only
God can clean and when you're clean, you're clean. Now walk
right on in and don't you give another thought about not being
clean. Don't you ever try to wipe off the lipstick of your
face. or wipe off the smudges from your forehead. Mamas, don't
be licking your fingers and messing with your boys, what do you call
that, parts. Don't be doing that to your children
before they come into the presence of their father who cleansed
them with the blood of Jesus because there's nothing else
required, you see. That's the picture, isn't it?
The picture is just such a simple picture that a three-year-old,
and a four-year-old, and a five-year-old, and a ten-year-old, and a fifteen-year-old,
and a thirty-year-old, no matter how old we may get, we can see
this picture so that when we look in the mirror, we know what's
really here. We know what's going on here.
We are clean no matter what we see, no matter how hard we fight. We're clean. And so while we're doing this
war, we work together, we gather together, we assemble together
because there alone comes the edge of intimacy. There alone comes the edge of
truth. There alone comes the edge of honesty. Being together
as the body, physically, face to face, in person. We can smell
each other's soap. We can hear each other's whispers.
We can see each other's facial expressions. We know when something
is wrong. I know your face. You all don't
understand, but I have a photograph of your face in my mind and I
know when it's different. You ever walked into a room in
your house and something's out of place? It's like, something's
wrong in here. You ever looked in the mirror
and you see some big green dot on your forehead? You don't go,
hmm, hair's a little messy. People are like, what that? What
is that? You don't even see your face
anymore. You see the dot. You see the whatever. You see
the imperfection. Friends, We're going to see imperfections. We're going to see trials. We're
going to see suffering. We're going to see temptation.
And some of us are going to see falling and failing in that temptation. And we are going to sin, some
of us lightly, some of us heavily. But if we're together and we
know that when we get together, we're to be encouraging each
other in this confidence. This confidence erases the war
because Christ's blood has established the presence of God for us. Christ's
blood has established our being justified. Christ's blood has
purchased us for the Father. And those, those, those that keep wanting to rest
in something else, Those who hear about the sovereign and
free grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the only gospel
that is from the Bible. And they keep pushing it away
for some other type of assurance. They keep saying, I hear what
you're saying, James, but I'm going to hoe this road over here
so I can bring the harvest in, just in case. So I'm going to
go to the Lord with whatever Jesus did and whatever I can
bring. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. And friends, you're not going
to have a clean conscience. I mean, if we were arrogant or
narcissistic, Maybe we could think like Cain. We think, okay, look, God, look
what I did. I did it just like my brother.
Boom! But Christ either is the harvest bringer, he is the sacrifice,
he is the payment, or he's not. If I go to the store and I buy
something, I get a receipt for that, and I get home and they
call me and say, hey, you owe us another dollar. They can come
get it if they want to. but I'm not gonna give it to
him. I paid you. Well, we just decided we wanted
one more dollar. Well, you can just decide all
you want. It's paid. Let's go to court. You see, that's
how it works in America, right? And the judge goes, this is the
receipt. The balance says zero. Why you
want another dollar? Because I think he should pay
another dollar. The price went up. Too bad. Too bad. You can't get the other
dollar. There's nowhere to put it. There's
no book to put it on. There's no record. There's no
deposit that you can put it on. It's just a free dollar floating
out into nowhere. So if he gives it to you, you have fraud in
your bank books. What are you going to do with
it? What's this dollar? And if you
don't think a dollar makes a big deal to a banker, just ask one.
They'll catch on fire for two cents. There's nothing left to pay.
There's nothing left to do. The balance is paid in full.
So if we go on sinning deliberately, what is he talking about? The sin of false confidence,
the sin of false assurance, the sin of trying to be more confident
by doing things that are required in a spiritual or religious way.
Being more confident by establishing some sense of transformation in our lives so
that we can have a little bit more hope. Because when someone
comes to the knowledge of the truth, and you've heard me say
this on Sunday mornings in the last few weeks, there are a lot
of academic conversions who were not born again. A lot of people
go, yep, I believe that precept. I believe that precept. I believe
that precept. That sounds good to me. I believe these are true. Check, check, check, check, check,
check, checklist right into the arms of the living God. And it
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Saving faith is not a cognitive
exercise of your academic ability and intellectuality, despite
what the Clarkian type people like to say. I appreciate this
philosophical ideals. I love the idea that yes, there
is a mental ascent in the context of faith, but the demons ascent
mentally to the nature and the work of Christ. Saving faith
is a gift of God in which the person rests mentally, physically,
spiritually, emotionally. And the way it is played out
in the context of the Christian faith is together as the church,
then we begin to live and to walk and to encourage one another.
When we see people in sin, we are spiritual, restore them.
Don't do that because we are a child of God. This creates
intimacy. I mean, this destroys intimacy.
This destroys your witness. This destroys your joy. It destroys
your mind, your conscience. It's not clear. You don't feel
clean, but Christ has cleansed you. And the opposite of that
is the people that do so well and then fight sin so well and
they're living such a clean life, they go, look at me, look at
me, I'm doing well. See, the evidence of my saving faith is that I'm
doing well. But they're not doing well, they're doing poorly. And
that is the continuing to sin deliberately after receiving
the knowledge of the truth. When someone comes up and encourages
you in the context of the assembled saints, to rest in the finished
work of Jesus and you push back and go, okay, but give me room
to dance a little bit because I'm going to dance my way to
the Lord's good graces. This is wrong. And a child of God who's been
granted repentance, which is saving faith in the finished
work of Jesus Christ through the declaration of hearing the
Word of God in its full context over many seasons and months
and years will never reject, will listen, never reject the
free and sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ever. And
anytime someone does, they are to be considered unconverted. Plain and simple. And in this Language here in
26 and 27, this is what they need to understand. Or moreover,
this is what we need to understand about them. Christ has satisfied
the wrath of God. He is the object of God's destructive
justice and righteousness for his people. And his people are
safe from him because he has called them and given them to
Christ. And Christ died in their place.
But those who reject this truth, There's no longer a sacrifice
for sin. There's nothing there for them. It's not the sacrifices
of the temple. It's not the sacrifices of the
tithe. It's not the sacrifices of things like that, but a fearful
expectation of judgment, a fury of a fire that will consume the
adversaries of God. And then this is review, verse
28, we saw last week, verse 28, 29, that those who would put
aside the law of Moses died without mercy on two or three witnesses. So how much more do we deserve
when we push away the grace of the living God? When we push
away the blood of the covenant? When we push away what? The Son. By embracing anything but the
finished work of Christ, we profane the very blood of Christ. And in doing so, we outrage the
spirit of grace. And verse 30 and 31 is a reminder
to those who are doing this, and those who are troubling these
saints to do these things, is a reminder that God is not going
to play nice. And I know that's a stupid thing
to say, but God is not going to play nice. He's not going
to say, you know what, let's just work out our differences and let's ante
up. Let's throw the ball around. Let's just have a good picnic
and just let things be things. No, justice is justice, righteousness
is righteousness, wrath is wrath, good is good, and that's all
there is to it. And if someone pushes aside just
a smidgen the blood of Jesus Christ as their sufficient hope,
as their sufficient confidence, and as the sufficient evidence
of their salvation, then they are playing with fire. But that is those who go on sinning.
That's what the sinning deliberately is. It's not my idea, it's what
Paul says. That they continue to push away
the blood of Christ and the finished work of the redemption and the
covenant, the promise of God through the Lord Jesus. That's the sin,
deliberately. Deliberately sinning by continuing
in these religious things. But he says, but. But, see verse
32, but. Recall the former, and we read
this last week, but we didn't talk a lot about it. But recall
the former days. when after you were enlightened.
Remember where you come from, beloved. That's what he's saying.
And when your mind, when you were granted repentance, that's
the enlightening of the mind. The disposition of the mind has
been changed. There is a new set of truths inside your brain.
That's what repentance is. It has nothing to do with stopping
sin. That's stupid. That's an evangelical demonic
teaching that has just infiltrated the false gospel of America.
A bunch of them. We need to change our minds and
that is a gift. We need to change our minds concerning,
if you look in the New Testament you see where Jesus uses the
idea of repent and believe. Change the way you're thinking
about your righteousness. What must we do to inherit eternal
life? You need to change the way you're thinking right now
about what you can do and you need to believe in the proclamation
that you just heard us preach Dingleberry about what I did.
about what I'm going to do. This is the work of God. This
is the will of God that you believe on the Son whom He has sent.
Change your mind. Guess what you can't do? You
can't change your mind concerning these spiritual things because
you can't understand spiritual things until you've been born
by the Spirit. And the only way that's going to happen is when
He blows where He wishes in the hearts of His people only at
the occasion or sometime after the occasion of hearing the proclamation
of the truth. And you've been enlightened.
And when you were enlightened, you endured hard suffering. See
what it says there? It cost you everything. You couldn't buy
and sell. You couldn't do anything. You
couldn't own businesses hardly anymore. You were ostracized.
You were kicked out of temple life. So everything you knew
as a culture, everything you knew as an economy, everything
you knew as a fellowship, it was over because you refused
to follow after the false teachings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
You refused to believe in the humanistic, naturalistic idea
of universalistic racist mindset of these are Jews and we got
it together and we going to be God's people. You refuse to listen
and do all these things because God granted you a new mind to
see and he gifted you a new heart to believe and he calls you to
believe. And now you've been enlightened
and you are paying for it. You paid for it then and you're
paying for it now. And see, now that some time has
gone away, people are like, well, we really need to sort of try
to get along with these folks. I'll tell you what we'll do.
We'll make it so where they can sort of wiggle back into Judaism. They can start to do some spiritual
things that we're used to. They can fall underneath the
Southern Baptist tradition, or the Methodist Conference, or
this, that, and the other, and we'll get these people falling
in line in such a way that they can believe that little stuff
they wanna believe, but they'll do these things and such, they
will patronize and put to death all of this division. But it doesn't work like that. Because we can't, we can't reject
that which we've been taught by God. Nobody can argue, debate
you or apologetically entice you to believe the gospel. God
does it divinely and you believe it and you rest in it, sometimes
even inexpressibly. And these people understood what
that was like. Sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach.
What does that mean? abusive mindset of people where
they accuse you of things you haven't done. These are blasphemers. They did it to our Lord. They're
going to do it to us. They did it to them. They did
it to the apostles. They did it to Stephen. They
paid people to lie about Stephen so that he could be executed. Exposed to reproach and affliction. And it wasn't just you alone.
I mean, there were others who were partners with those who
were treated. You weren't alone. Your family, your household wasn't
alone. This group wasn't alone. This city wasn't alone. It wasn't
just Jerusalem. It was everywhere. It was in
Antioch and it was in Galatia and it was other places. There
are a lot of places. It was in Rome for sure. You were mistreated and there
were a lot of us who were mistreated. Remember those days. Remember
how you endured such hardships. Remember what you were feeling. Remember how hard it was and
it would just be so easy to stand up and go, okay, I relent. I
give it back. I don't believe these things.
Yes, I must do all this stuff and I'm going to live a life
to prove that I'm God's children. You know, Jesus is a good back
burner sticker on the back of the envelope. But they wouldn't
do it, why? Because they belong to the Father,
they belong to the Son, they belong to the Spirit, and they
would not recant in word or in deed. While they were being mistreated
and suffering, what does it say in verse 34, what they were doing?
For you had compassion on those who had been imprisoned. See,
they weren't going, oh, poor me, wah! You know, like we do,
that's what we do as Americans. But when we're all suffering
together, we begin to learn that our compassion toward one another
is the act of busyness that keeps us focused on the finished work
of Jesus. Because when we're together,
and we're serving, and we're loving, and we're doing what
we can, and we're concerned with one another, we're not looking
in the mirror thinking, what is that spot on my head? And they had compassion on those
two prisoners. in prison. And they, I love this phrase,
it's been one of my favorite lines in Hebrews for many, many
years, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property.
Let me tell you, there's a lot of things that I can look, overlook,
and there's a lot of things that I have patience for. But I don't
have patience if I walked up in there and seen people stealing
something out of my house. Could you imagine? We've been burglarized
before when I was a kid, and it is an incredibly invasive
experience. Somebody came in your house,
dug through your underwear drawer, dug through your sock drawer,
dug through your junk drawer. Why are you going to dig in a junk
drawer? Stealing stuff that wasn't worth anything but was worth
a lot to you. One year they tore down the Christmas tree. Smashed all the... That's what people do. It was
awful to think. We were gone three hours, somebody
comes in, ransacks the house, tears it all to pieces, and I'm
probably nine or 10 years old now. I wasn't too joyful. Neither were my mother and stepfather. They weren't too joyful. The
cops weren't too joyful. My siblings weren't too joyful.
There's something wrong with that. Yet in this season, not
only were they plundering the property, they were taking it
from them. and throwing them in prison. They get out of prison
or they come back home, there's nothing there but walls. Nothing you
can do. When you apostate, you lose it.
Government can do what it wants to do. It took it all. And instead
of moaning and complaining and, ooh, I lost it all, they joyfully
accepted it. Praise the Lord, somebody stole
all my junk. Now I don't have anything to
give in the way of worshiping our Lord and Savior and living
with the Lord's people who lost all their junk too. See, that's how it looked. But
how is it that they did that? Since you knew that yourselves
had a better possession. We've moved 14 times. And when
I say moved, sometimes it's been three or four times in different
cities. We got a temporary house and an apartment and then a house
or something like that. So we've moved our belongings 14 different
times over the last 25 years. That's a lot of moving. Three
times one time, in a six-month period. Three times in six months.
This house, or this house, or this house. Transitions. And when you get everything you
want on the truck, and you look back, you got all this stuff.
You used to have stuff in the house, right? You got things on the ground,
you got trash, and all that kind of stuff. And there's always
the one or two boxes that nobody loaded. What do you do with them?
Ah, just throw them away! Just throw them out. I don't
even know what's in there. It says, storage. I think I had that box when I
was 12. Put it in the trash. We don't care about that little
box, because all of our belongings are on the truck. We don't really
worry about, although I did have almost an anxiety attack three
hours into our trip leaving California, because I realized I left all
my cleaning supplies and all of my mop heads in a particular
crate in the driveway. I'm like, no, that's like $70.
Turn around and drive six hours. But we have a better, all of
our stuff, all of our possessions, all of our prize, everything
we have is over here. It doesn't matter, that old house,
we don't care about that thing, we'll clean it up later. Let
somebody else enjoy the mop heads. Now what's the example? When
we look at everything we possibly experience in suffering in this
life, and we will look at everything it cost us, and the friendships
it cost us, and the relationship it cost us, the anxiety, the
stress, just the nature of being a child of God in a world that
doesn't love him and know him and can't know him, and hates
the very fabric of his righteousness and his sovereign grace, and
they tear up all the trash. It's sort of like 1 John 2, 15
and beyond. It's passing away. It's like
somebody burglarizing my house right now and cleaning my toilets.
Ooh. Because they want the toilet
water out of it. You stole my toilet water. I got a whole truckload
of pure water out back. Somebody pickpockets you and
take $20, but you got a million in your right pocket. You're
so dumb. You got the wrong thing. You're
not going to worry about it. You joyfully accepted it. You
can have this garbage. You can have this life. You can
have this religion. You can have this experiences.
You can have this society. You can have this economy. You
can have this nation. Because where I belong and who
I belong to, he will destroy it all and I'll have everything
and you'll have nothing. you have an abiding possession,
an eternal possession. Paul says that in 2 Corinthians
4, in the context of all of his weird, broke, you know, all these
things that he does. I think I've read that several
times over and over and over in the last few months. But I
mean, you look at all those things that he talks about there. We're
afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, carrying
in the body the death of Jesus. What does he say is the alternative
there? Reflected, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not driven to
despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not
destroyed. Carried in the body the death
of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in
our bodies. For we who live are given over to death for the sake
of Christ, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in
our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life is at
work in you. So we don't lose heart. We don't
lose heart, he says. Though our outer self is wasting
away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this
light momentary affliction is preparing us for 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. As we look,
not to the things we do that we can see. Not to the things
that we accomplish spiritually. Not to the ministry that we perform.
Not the things that we can tangibly record. I did this and I didn't
do that. But we look to that which is unseen, that which is
eternal, that which is unperishable and unfading and undefiled. Kept
it, kept you, who being kept by the power of God. This is
1 Peter 1 now. You glory in it. You have joy
in it. Because you have a better and
an abiding possession. Therefore, verse 35, the whole point of
the sermon and I'm done. I should have started with the therefore.
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence. Don't throw away
your confidence. Don't throw away the finished
work of Jesus. Don't worry yourself into oblivion
while the finished work of Christ is there, obvious to you. You
know what you've endured, beloved. You know what it has cost you.
Why would you throw it away now just because some people were
aggravating you to live a certain way to prove that you're a believer? Because to live as a believer
is to put to death the flesh and the works of the flesh, which
includes acts of self-righteousness, which includes living in such
a manner that thinks that you should have that might establish
you confidence. That's the work of the flesh.
It's the Tower of Babel. It's the fig leaves in the garden.
It's garbage. But you do have need of endurance.
Because see, Christ has a great reward. When you're confident
in him, there's a great reward. For you have need of endurance.
We need to hold fast. It's hard. This isn't easy. This
isn't like, okay, someone says, touch your nose. Oh, I thought
you said ear. I mean, you know, oh man, I lost. I mean, this
is hard. It's not even rub your belly and pat your head type
thing. You know, that's what, where? You ever tried that? Some
people just can't do it. It's not that. It's difficult.
It's like trying to fly when you're not a bird. It's trying
to breathe underwater when you're not a whale. Well, they don't
breathe underwater, do they? How about that? They breathe
air. They drown if they breathe underwater.
A fish. It's like trying to pick up a
truck when you're a child. When you've done the will of
God, you have endurance and you've done the will of God. What is
the will of God? to believe in the Son, to hold fast in trials, to hold
fast in religious persecution, to hold fast in community persecution,
to hold fast in nationalistic persecution, to hold fast against
all the grain of false gospels and all those who purvey them
and know that you know that you know that you have eternal life
because of the proclamation of the promise of God through Jesus
Christ whose blood shed for you was sufficient for your life.
And that's enough. That's enough. And we see verses
37 and 38 and 39. And we see the promise there. We
see that expression there. And I'm going to go through these
three or four verses next week as we move into chapter 11. But
ask yourself, as he's quoting several different places in scripture,
Isaiah, Another Old Testament, Haggai maybe. I don't, I can't
remember exactly where they are. This is 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. And I don't want to get into
this a whole lot tonight, but ask yourself, can a Christian shrink
back at all? And the answer is yes. Can a
Christian slide over into works for a season? Yes! That's why
the letter was written, remember? That's why verse 39 is so important.
But, we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed. But we
are of those who have faith and preserve their souls. We may
lose sight. We may be tempted. We may fear
even. But we've got to be together.
We've got to hear the preaching of the word. We've got to be shepherded.
We've got to be helped by one another. We've got to assemble
so that we can be reminded of these things. We need to understand
that being honest and open about our trials and our sins and things
of that nature. We don't need to know the details of sin. We
just need to know we need help and that we need endurance. And
the reminder is what Christ accomplished and what He did for us so that
as we're walking in these doubtful days, we come out of them going,
wow, there's the sun. I knew the sun was coming because
my brother told me it was coming. I'm in good shape. We don't fall
back into the law. We don't fall back into legalism,
even though we may turn that direction. It's short-lived. But what happens when we're not
together? We neglect the very doing of the very thing that
we're left on earth to do. And that is to encourage each
other on to love and to good deeds that undergird that love
as evidence of love. We're not destroyed. So beloved,
you've been shrinking back a little bit. I'm writing these things
that you do not shrink back because you cannot fall away from Christ. But those who do, they've fallen
into the hands of an angry God, and on their head comes His eternal
fury. But this is not you. Because
you and I, we have faith, and because we continue to believe
in the preservation of the promises of God through His conditions,
we know that our souls likewise are preserved. So let's stop
there and pray. We thank you, Lord, for this
great promise. I thank you, Father, for this letter and for its reading.
And I thank you, Lord, that your word is sufficient, that we can
go through this text and we can see what you're teaching us.
And we don't have to spend days and hours and months and years
looking at other people's ideas about what this word is saying.
For your spirit teaches us the truth and it becomes obvious
to us. Lord, I pray that as you continue to use us in the teaching
of scripture that you would grow your people in their understanding
that they might teach the scripture first to themselves and those
around them and then to those who are in their lives, Father,
who may be the elect, who may be your children, or those amongst
the saints who are struggling and feeling like they're falling
away and shrinking back, Lord, that you would be our confidence
and our sufficiency and our assurance. Lord, all the manners of depression,
All the manner of despair is weighty upon our shoulders, but
the light momentary affliction of these heavy things, they are
nothing compared to the weight of the glory that you have promised
us and secured us unto in Christ Jesus. And it's his name and
by his name that we pray. Amen.