for about three more weeks in
chapter 10. Could have done a little bit
more, but I think it is sufficient to say that we see what Paul
is trying to do. I know that I say this a lot,
and sometimes it can become annoying, and usually when you hear things
repetitiously, they can easily just sort of be blocked out.
Oh yeah, we see that, like something in the room that you always see,
you cannot notice it. But I do encourage everyone to
continue to please read the letters that we're studying. Read Hebrews.
Read 1 John. Continue to be in the Bible,
in its context. Don't fall prey to these, you
know, these... I don't want to make fun of them.
It's not bad, but it's insufficient. It's like going into the food
court at the mall and taking a sample and then getting the
smell and saying that you've eaten. Doing devotions and little
tiny verse of the day and stuff like that may be an encouragement.
It may be a little, you know, it may be a little thump in the
ear or something, but it's not eating the Word. It's not sufficient.
It will not provide anything for you much over what a fortune
cookie might give you in that sense. And I'm not saying that
to be, you know, to downplay. the use of the Word of God, but
I want you to read the letters. Read the letters because as Paul
is teaching here in Hebrews 10, as we know, he's not thinking
Hebrews 10. He's not thinking different subject. He's teaching
that which he's continued to teach from the beginning of the
letter, and he's going to show us what the rest and the resting
in the sufficiency of Christ that is the good news of God's
electing love and mercy for his people through Jesus. how it
is ours, how we know it is ours, what it looks like, because it
is ours, and he's going to expressly deal with what believing the
gospel means. And so we are to receive what
is promised, and we receive what is promised by believing what
is promised, and that believing in all simple ways is resting. is knowing that what is ours
we have and we don't have to work for it and that's where
he is here. We're in verse 19 through 25
tonight and specifically when you look at what he's written
let's just read, goodness, let's just read verses 11 through 25
and then let's talk about it. And every priest stands daily
at his service, offering repeatedly sacrifices over and over, which
can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered once
for all a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right
hand of God, waiting until that time until the enemies should
be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has
perfected for all time those who are being sanctified and
the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us For after saying this is
the covenant I will make with them after those days declares
the Lord I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on
their minds Then he adds I will remember their sins no more or
their lawless deeds no more where there is forgiveness of these
Paul writes and There is no longer any offering for sin. So ride that ship into the shore
for a minute. See the current as it takes you
into that because the very next thing out of his mouth is this.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter
into the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living
way that he opened up for us through the curtain, that is
through his flesh. And since we have a great priest over the
house of God, here's the command, 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 up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet
together as the habit of the sun, but encouraging one another,
and all the more as you see the day drawing near." Now, we're
not gonna really get to that. Next week, we'll pick up verses
24 and 25 as part of the teaching that Paul does. In verse 26,
where we see this next, the second portion of warning passages in
Hebrews 4, he goes into further explanation about what he means.
So as we look at this, Paul is saying, therefore, therefore. What does he mean? Because of
what Christ has done, because our sins are forgiven, and our
lawless deeds are forgiven, and that God has not remembered our
sins, has not remembered our lawless deeds, they have been
cast away, they have been put aside, they have been put, how
does the scripture say? As far as the East is from the
West, that's an eternal distance, continually in the opposite direction. on a plane. And it's pushing
farther and further away that our guilt And God's wrath, boom,
is going this way and our freedom and forgiveness is going this
way. Our sins are forgiven. We stand perfect. We stand set apart once and for
all for all time in the face of God. Why? Because He crushed
His Son in our place. He crushed His Son in our place.
I'll remind us that there is no such thing as a an offer of
the gospel. Yes, we are to preach the gospel
to all people. We are to preach the gospel as
we're able to in every circumstance as the Spirit leads and guides
us. But the gospel is inclusive of the fact that God has saved
His people from their sins through the blood of Jesus. There is
no other gospel. The gospel is not, look what
Jesus did in His love, like a martyr, what you gonna do with it? The
gospel is that Christ's death saved a people. Past tense. You are not going to be saved
if you do something with the gospel. You have been saved because
of the gospel. And that truth alone and singularly,
myopically, is the only object of saving faith, that we have
been saved by the blood of Jesus. Not I got saved because I did
something or believed in something, but God caused me to believe
that He did save me on the cross at Calvary. It's a huge difference. Now Siri's asking something about
the cross. There we go. She goes, I didn't
get that. What'd you say? So here, I know
it seems like it's just so redundant, but I believe if we were not
living in the culture that we lived in, where we were inundated
with cultural Christianity, with cultural religion, with a cultural
so-called gospel, with cultural attitudes toward church and ecclesiology
and faith and all these things. Paul would not have, this letter
would not be so important to us. Just like the Jews who received
it, they grew up for millennia with a cultural foundation of
religion, with a cultural understanding of a so-called gospel, and so
on and so forth. And the creativity of unconverted
people, specifically men in the clergy, men in the priesthood,
men who were part of the ruling class of Israel, they took it
and did what they could do with it in their creativity. They
afforded it great depths of time and for philosophy and thinking
and everything else so that by the time Christ came on the scene
there was no gospel. And nothing's changed. People
think that the line from the Reformation to the protest of
reform to date is a beautiful line. It is a line that has gone
sideways and south. It hasn't gotten better, it's
gotten worse. We've picked certain things and
we've gone sideways with it. And people would rather placate
to the idea of a historical document or historical theologian or historical
position rather than open the Word of God and be dumb as rocks
but wise in the spirit through whom God teaches His Word. Because it is not popular. And
the therefore, this confidence that we see in verse 19 through
23, this confidence is what we're all looking for. This assurance
is what we're hoping for. This mindset is what we're longing
to have constantly because if we look at life, There is so
much to think about and so much to do and so much to worry over
that where is the fulfilled Christian life? Where is the evangelical
He came to give you life and more abundantly? Where is the
abundant life? It's right here. It's right here. It's in the fact that some 2,000
years ago, Jesus, God the Son, the eternal God, who became man,
died on the cross and satisfied the wrath of God for His elect
alone, and that God the Spirit, through the proclamation of that
edict, He causes His people to believe it. He causes His people
to believe it. And there have been, I don't
know, let's just say hundreds of thousands of books written
out throughout history since the first century relating to
how you can know that you know that you know that you have eternal
life and most all of them deal with everything that you can
do to grow in your confidence. Paul has written a short little
tiny 20 minute read that allows us to know what God has done
to give us that assurance. So therefore, there is forgiveness
of sins. There is no longer an offering
for sin. There is no longer a condition
that any human being could meet or has to meet in order to be
saved. There is nothing else to do that
God has not already done. This is the third time I've said
that in four weeks. Therefore, brothers and sisters,
Since and here's what here's what Paul now is going to say
he's going to unfold the reality that he's already said it He's
already talked about confidence to enter into the holy places
He's already talked about how Christ went through the Holy
of Holies Through the veil and he tore it all down and now he
stands at the place of judgment Sitting at the right hand of
the magic of majesty having paid for sins that justice is satisfied
righteousness prevails But Paul is going to organize
his thoughts as he moves on into some pastoral instruction, then
to give some theological instruction, spiritually speaking, about how
we are to hold fast to this promise. We have confidence. Confidence. What does it mean to have confidence?
We're sure of ourselves. We're sure of ourselves. I mean,
when I lay in my bed at night, barring recent back pains and
injuries, but when I lay in my bed at night, I don't check it.
I don't wonder if it's there. I just lay in it. I don't inspect
the area. I don't kick it to see if it's
real. We just lay in it. When we go
to scratch our heads, We're not having to get in the mirror and
then pick up with our left hand or our right hand and say, okay,
my right hand is here, and let's see if my fingers work. Okay,
I've got fingernails. They're there. Let me see. My
head's here. Hey, could you tell me if my head was here on my
shoulders? Is my hair there? Is my head really here? And thinking,
is this stupid or not? But yeah, that's stupid. It'd
be stupid for us to do that. We don't do that. We have confidence
to know that our mind does, without thinking about it, put our body
into a place where we can scratch our nose, scratch our head, rub
our eyes if they itch. It just happens. The same thing
is true, even more so, in Christ, that we have confidence. What
kind of confidence? A lot of confidence, but specifically
speaking, we have confidence to enter the holy places. That
means we have the confidence to enter into the presence of
God without trembling. We have confidence to stand in
the presence of the judge of the universe without fear. We
have confidence to be able to go up and say, hey pops. And
people go, oh that's blasphemous. That's the word of God. It is
not blasphemous to have an intimate heart to consider the father
your pop, your dad. It's not blasphemous. People
who have the mindset that that's too intimate don't understand
the gospel. They've not grown past their
perceived idea of God's gravity. Now, yes, is God holy? Yes. He's set apart. He's beyond all
things. We can never understand him fully, but he's revealed
himself intimately to his people through Jesus Christ. And the
fullness of all that God has ever or ever will reveal about
himself to us is seen in the killing of Jesus Christ, his
one and only son, so that we could come in and say, hey, dad,
hey, daddy, And everything else in the context of that relationship
can be put under the feet of God while he handles his affection
for his children. Think about that for a second.
I mean, if you were a deity, Let's just be mythological for
a moment. If you were a deity and you had
all absolute power and you had absolute sovereignty, would you
choose to reveal your sovereign righteousness by redeeming a
rebellious people who deserve to die? No. Oh, we could come
up with a lot better screenplay than that. But that is what God
has done. Not because he loves everything
and all sorts of puppies and butterflies and pickles. Not
because he hopes and wishes and dreams that all people would
come to see and believe and he's just so broken hearted. No, God
has saved his particular people for himself. And if you believe
that, you believe the good news. He did the work of redemption.
So therefore you have confidence to enter the holy places, a place
where in it symbolically a Jew would never go. Even the high
priest who had the lot that year to go in and offer the sacrifices,
he went in with great trepidation, fear, wondering, if I go in with
the wrong mind, if I go in with the wrong preparation, God will
kill me. He will strike me dead. Just
as you saw many times through through the Old Testament, where
He killed people for the wrong mindset in approaching Him. You
cannot approach God with anything in your flesh, and you cannot
approach God with a dress, or with a suit, or with clean words,
or clean thoughts, or praises, or hymns. You cannot approach
God in any way that has anything to do with what you can do to
look the part. The only way we can approach
God is to walk boldly, naked, with nothing else but our sin
and guilt and shame, that has been paid for through the blood
of Christ and we walk in into the holy places by that blood. That's what Paul's saying there.
We enter into the holy places by the blood of Jesus. Why is
he using that symbolism? Because that's what he's been
talking about. The priesthood was a shadow of what Christ accomplished. The priesthood did nothing, Jesus
did it all. The priesthood never saved, Jesus
saved the uttermost. This is the words of this letter.
Jesus did redeem a people. The bulls and the goats and the
priests never redeemed anything. Matter of fact, they had to wash
when they left. It was all fake. It was a shadow. It was a temporary picture of
what God had promised. Just like marriage is a temporary
picture of what God has promised through the reconciliation of
Jesus Christ and glorification. When we are intimate with Him
personally as our husband for eternity. That's another conversation.
That's Ephesians 5, Colossians 3. So we enter into this presence
of God by the blood of Jesus. And he continues to describe
it, verse 20, by the new way. You notice that? He says new
and living way. There's two descriptives there. It's the new way. And some people will take that
and go, well, look at there. See, there was an old way you could
get to God, but he's already said that never gave you the
right to be in the presence of God except under judgment. You
would enter into the presence of God with all the preparation
you want and all you would be is naked and guilty. You would
be ashamed. But now there's a new way. And
the difference is from the old way, the old way pointed to the
new way and the old way was a dead way. That's what the law is.
That's what the 10 commandments are. It is death. It is a dead
way, but this is the new way and this is the living way. When
Jesus tells Martha, I am the resurrection and I am the life. He's serious. That if you are
in Him, if you have been given to Him, if God the Father has
satisfied His wrath for you in Christ, you are in Christ. You
have been submerged into Christ. Baptismo. You have been baptized
into the death of Jesus so your sins have been paid for. And
then you have been baptized into the life of Jesus so as He is
life, He is your life. And if He is your life, you're
alive. It's plain and simple. Yet there must be more. But it's
the new way and the living way. Jesus is the life. He is the
living way. His blood, having died, now He
was glorified, resurrected because He was not sin. He was not evil. He had no sin. He took on the
imputation of our guilt. He didn't personally become wicked. He didn't sin. But he stood in
our place as a sin offering. Because it's not an offering,
it's not a sacrifice. You can't, just like a bull's
blood doesn't redeem a person, neither can a sinner's blood
redeem them. Because a sinner's blood is justice. A sinner's
blood being shed is righteousness. And when that blood is shed,
God is just. God would be unjust to bring
that sinner back from the dead and give him life again. So Jesus,
in His blood that was not guilty, took on our guilt. Now we are
the righteousness of God because of it. This new and living way
that He opened for us through the curtain. Could you imagine?
I mean, I can't put myself in that situation. I've played,
for those of you who don't know, I'm a saxophonist, I've played
hundreds of weddings. I played more Kenny G than I
ever want to say. I don't ever want to play it
again. And I say, can you play Songbird? Can you play the wedding
song? Can you, you know? I mean, it's just, yeah, you
want to pay me 500 bucks. That sounds good. And I mean,
I love going in these. I've been in a cheap wedding.
I've been an expensive wedding. I've played saxophone in a wedding
that cost six figures. And I've been in a wedding that
they probably paid the family to get out of there fast. I've
been in backyard weddings and I've been in cathedral weddings
and there's one thing I love about playing saxophone in an
extremely old building. that's huge is the Resonance.
I love it. So I used to always get there
early and do a little sound check and I would play and I would
play in these huge vaulted, I mean like 70, 80, 100 foot ceilings.
One in particular downtown Savannah and I went in there and I played
and I'm standing up in this little area and I'm just playing and
I'm playing and playing and I've been in there 15 minutes and
all of a sudden I see this white streak of a priest come running
out and nearly tackled me to the ground. Get away! You've
entered into the holy places. You know, that isn't exactly
what he said, but I was standing on this little stage and it was
taboo. How dare you defile this area?
And I'm thinking, what, does the janitor sweep this floor
the same as he sweeps this floor? I mean, you know, it's just a
little banister and I was a little, you know, taken back from it. But no, he didn't want me. So
I mean, even in this world, there are places you can't stand with
a horn. You don't play Kenny G in the holy spot, because you'll
be in trouble. You don't do these things. So
there are still places in certain religious sects and certain denominations
that are sacred. You don't touch the pulpit. You
don't touch the offering plate. You don't do that. You don't
stand up. You don't go to the bathroom. You don't blink your
eyes. You don't fall asleep. There's a lot of things that
people think that if you do something off in their mind, you've offended
God. You have encroached upon His
holy place. So I don't even know what denomination
it was or kind of church it was. I'm sure it was some cult. But
I got out of there. I didn't want to get in there.
It'd be like going to the Russellites and taking the communion. I've
always thought about that. Me and some buddies in Cali used
to want to go do that. Let's go to Kingdom Hall and
just take the communion. He's one of the 144,000. He's
an elder. Only the 144,000 could take communion. But that's their conscience,
that's their conviction. Imagine going into the temple and giving your kid a sippy cup
and letting your child go into the Holy of Holies. You know, we've all had the kid
that didn't drink the sippy cup, that held it by their teeth.
Little rubber, and then put a hole in it, and then they'd just shake
it, and it'd slip everywhere. Could you imagine, in the days
of the Temple of the Tabernacle, a child with a sippy cup just
sprinkling un-kosher, non-kosher apple juice all over the place?
It wouldn't happen. Why? Because before a child could
even walk, A parent would tell that child, do you see this?
This is what this is all about. This is what this area is all
about. And only the priest can go in here. And not every priest
can go in here because in there is where God is. And if we go
in there unworthy, He'll kill us. I mean, it's tough. So for Paul to say here, Jesus
found a new way that's a living way to enter into the curtain. We went through the curtain.
I mean, who cleaned the temple? Who cleaned the Holy of Holies?
You know, I've seen that before in my travels where you go to
some of these places and you see some just foolishness in
the name of Christianity. And then people, they put on
these shows and everything's so spiritual. And then after
the fact, and you're standing in the back at a table and after
the fact you know all these spiritual spots are just the janitors come
in spraying Windex and wiping down
things with towels and vacuuming, telling jokes, laughing, carrying
on. And you think, well these things
aren't really spiritual at all. That would have happened in the
temple. I imagine that the requirements
to cleanse the temple, that only the high priest could go in there
still. I don't think it was just on show time, just on worship
days. I think it was a present, a constant
presence. It wasn't just on the Sabbath
that you couldn't touch the Ark of the Covenant when we're traveling
to Israel. And I know it was about to fall in the mud, buddy,
but you died because you disobeyed God. That's what righteousness
is all about. It's pure justice. Holiness is
that it doesn't matter what your excuse is, God's right to kill
you. Paul says he entered through
the curtain by his blood, by his flesh. So Jesus goes in there
and goes, come on kids, get your sippy
cups. Come on guys, bring your saxophones.
Bring your vacuum cleaners. Have fun. Come in and out. See that pastor over here? You
never knew I was on the other side of this curtain, did you? It's
green pastors. And my Father wants you to come
through me and eat of it for the rest of your life. And I
want you to come and go as you please. You've seen nothing yet,
Nathaniel. That's what Jesus says. You've
not seen anything, but you will see heaven open. And you will
see angels descending and ascending on the Son of Man. I'm going to open heaven, Nathaniel,
and you're going to be able to come and go as you please to
and from in the presence of the Father. and there's going to
be no condemnation. You're not going to have to step
in here dressed to the nines. You're not going to have to wear
phylacteries. You're not going to have to be a priest. You're not going
to have to bring an offering. As a matter of fact, if you bring
an offering, you're not accepted. If you bathe before you get here,
you're unworthy to enter. Because you're saying that this
door that I gave to the blood that I shed and the body that
was crushed that belongs to me was insufficient. You see why
works assurance is so damning? It's not here. Works of Christ
give us life. This high priest went in, paid
for sins, tore open the curtains, threw away the Ark of the Covenant,
broke up the tablets, ate the budding staff of Aaron, kicked
the manna out for the dogs to eat, tore over the showbread
and busted out the back wall and set the whole thing on fire
because we were through with it. Three times a week I burn at
my house. Boxes, limbs, leaves, anything the children leave out
for too long. I love to burn stuff. Now I've got a little
box over there that burns well, and I'll burn it. If you need
anything to burn, bring it to my house. When we're done with it,
now I'm gonna say to that box, burn it! Look at that bag of
trash, don't throw it out there, let's just burn it, you know?
Jesus burned it down. And he literally burned down
the temple in 70 A.D. just as a show that it was over. It's finished. So we have confidence
to enter into the presence of God by the blood of Jesus, which
is the new and living way that He opened this curtain through
His flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the
house of God, who are the house of God? Not what is. Who are the house? What does
it talk about? It's already talked about that. Over in chapter 4
and 5, when Moses, when he talks about Moses, chapter 3 rather. Moses, I mean, he built a house.
He had a people with him. He was going and teaching and
being a mediator for the people. He was a type of Christ. A type. a foreshadowing of Jesus than
Joshua by the same name. By the way, Jesus and Joshua
are the exact same word. As a foreshadowing of Jesus. And Moses died because of disobedience. And we see the Jewish writings
over in Jude that say there's an argument over the myth that
maybe the devil fought over the body of Moses. We don't know. I mean, it's not theology, it's
just And Moses built a house. And we come in and say, wow,
look at this great house. We don't look at the house when
the builder shows up. Then we start going, you did
this? That's nice. You carved that? You painted
that? You wrote that? You composed that? You created
that? Wow, you're amazing. What did
Moses do? Nothing. He was a shadow builder. He built a shadow that was finished.
Jesus built it for real. Jesus established a people for
himself by his blood, by his death and was raised to life
and the life that he is, is ours. So we have a high priest over
the house of God, a great one, one that tore down the structure
of precepts and boundaries. What troubles me when people
hear me say that is when they come back with, oh, there's no
boundaries. Beloved, there's boundaries on
the road outside. There's boundaries on that seat.
Whenever we're all back together and it's full in here, test it.
When your legs are there between the cracks of those two cushions,
even though it's all connected one long row, just slide about
an inch toward your neighbor. You will cross over the boundary
and they'll be like, and then we'll move this way. Get a little
too close in the shopping mall and in the grocery aisle when
you're talking to somebody or when you're looking for pickles.
The person standing here, and this is before social distancing,
just get right up there with your shoulders almost at their
chin. How you doing? There's a boundary
there. They'll move away. It's uncomfortable. There are boundaries everywhere.
Just because we're saved by grace doesn't mean that there aren't
normal, logical, common sense, good, righteous boundaries. Paul's going to give us some.
John's been giving us some on Sunday morning. Love your neighbor.
Love your brothers. And he's going to teach us how
to do that in a real and tangible way. So why do people think,
well, that that means we can just live sinfully? Well, we
can. But when we do, guess what? The
Bible also gives us the boundaries to learn how to correct one another.
And if the correction is not taken, then we get rid of each
other until the behavior stops. No, I'm sorry, you can't come
in here today because you don't know how to wipe your feet. In
my house, my children wash their hands before they eat. I don't
care if they've come out of the bathroom washing their hands,
they're going to wash their hands at the kitchen sink. I want to
see hands clean because if they dip the beans and their hands
are nasty, And I dip the beans, then my hands are nasty. I know
that's ridiculous, and I'm absurd, but I'm obsessed with stuff like
that. I cannot get past it. And I know that there are people
who I have ate after are filthy, and I've been filthy, but I didn't
know it, so it didn't bother me, see? I'm admitting, it's
crazy. It's okay. There are boundaries.
We teach our children to brush their teeth. We teach. There
are some things to do, but there are no boundaries when it comes
to what Christ has accomplished. And therefore there are no boundaries
when it comes to being intimate with the Father in relation to
how we must be and what we must do in response to what Christ
has done. But of course there are boundaries
in worship. We see 1 Corinthians written about those things all
over. We see humility as a necessity. We see that come humbly. Of course
we're gonna come humbly. We're not just left to ourselves. I'm not saying that. The problem
that I have when people come back with that is I think that
that is what's always on their mind. Either one of two ways. Either they are constantly wishing
they could do things that they can't do because they're a Christian,
or they're constantly thinking that they're doing better than
most people who are Christians. Either way, it's evil. and it
needs correction. We need to quit conflating the
gospel with that which goes along as a privilege because of the
gospel. The greatest privilege that we have as believers, before
we ever get to the get-tos, is to understand what Christ has
accomplished, period. What He's already done. He is
the Great High Priest over the house of God, His people, and
He's torn through the curtain, He's burned it all down, and
He said, come in here, and you stand before God the Father,
and you call Him Pops. You call him pops. That's what
ABBA means. What's up, dad? Hey, dad, that's
how I talk to my father when he, hey, dad, I'll say hello,
father. And some of you may, that's fine.
When I'm talking about him, he's my father. When I'm talking to
him, he's my dad. Because of this, Because he's
done it all. Verse 22, command. Let us draw
near. Let's draw near. See, people
are like, you're just making stuff up. I just preach ahead
of my reading. That's all it is. Let us draw
near. And here's some boundaries. How
do we draw near to God? How do we sit in the lap of God
and say, hey, pops? With a heart in full assurance
of faith. And what kind of faith is that?
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Faith is the
conviction of things not seen. And Paul spends a lot of time,
a lot of time, and I pray by the Lord's mercy that he will
press me and keep me focused during chapter 11 of this teaching,
that I might go through and show you just what kind of character
these people who were commended had. It's purposeful. A heart in full assurance of
faith. See, you gotta have faith. Yes,
you will have faith. And as a believer, I can say
to you, as a pastor, shepherd, brother, I can say, you've got
to have faith. You need to believe, you need to trust, because you've
been redeemed, you need to have confidence, you need to be assured
of what God has promised in the midst of whatever. But what is this assurance of
faith looking like? How are we presented before the
Father? Here's how we're presented. We
draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith. We're
believing in that which he's already taught. We believe and
we're resting and we're trusting and we're hoping and we're confident
that what we are is Christ's. We are his. And he is ours. His life is our life. His death
is our death. His promise is our promise. His
power is our power. His glory is our glory. We've
been found to be in Him. And so we are all that He has
promised to be for us because we are His. So we have a heart
in full assurance of faith. And what that looks like is that
when we feel compelled I want you to really listen to this.
When we feel compelled to prove more, to do more, to be resolved,
to become more, there's nothing wrong with wanting to grow and
to serve and to love and to obey the Lord. Nothing wrong, but
it should come out of gratitude, and more importantly, it should
come from the calling of God to the saints, not fear. Not as a sacrifice. Not as a
stroke of confidence. Not as an offering of assurance. So our hearts are sprinkled clean. And listen to this imagery for
a minute. Listen to this. Let us draw near with a true
heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean
from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. I mean, think about that for
a second. Now, what's the context of his teaching right now? He's talking about
the eradication of the shadow of religious worship, of false
righteousness, washing ourselves, serving in the temple, doing
these things, feeling confident because of how we do and how
well we do and how passionate we are and how zealous we are
and all of these things. Beloved, I'm going to tell you,
there's not a person who claims Christ under the sound of my
voice who will ever listen to this sermon. Whether they're
listening right now or not, whoever listened to the sermon, who has
not come to the conclusion of either one or two things, they
are hopelessly unable to fulfill what the culture says they must
in the context of their Christian faith, or they are blinded to
think they have. And I say we work on those things
as the Lord has permitted us to, with confident assurance,
with a heart that is true, as we remember and know that
our hearts have been sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.
It's not the sacrifice that we bring, it's not the life that
we live, it's not the prayers that we pray, it's not the dress
that we wear that gives us a conscience that is not evil, a clean conscience
from evil, but it is the body and the blood of Jesus. Daddy, I am clean because you
killed Jesus Christ for me. That's the cry of a child who
knows who he is. And our bodies washed with pure
water, the bathing rituals of the law. I would live in that culture
very well. I would, I would live there. Yeah, because it would
be so good to say you're going to go to hell if you don't wash
your hands. It'd be great, you know. Did you brush your teeth
today? Yes. Abigail's learned to wet her toothbrush now, stick
it back on the thing, you know. You see broccoli sticking out.
Yeah, I brushed my teeth today. I mean, no you didn't. No, you didn't. She's learned.
It would be cool to be able to have some biblical mandate to
force cleanliness. It would just be amazing. The
sad truth is, is that even I or the craziest person like me would
not be clean enough. Christ is clean. And Christ got
dirty to cleanse us. Now we are clean. What does he
say? No, we didn't read it, but we're going to read it this coming
Sunday in John 15. The word that I have spoken to you has washed
you." What Christ did and proclaimed
to do for His people has cleaned them. He has sanctified them
and perfected them, rather, for all time. with a single sacrifice
Himself. So, as we are pure, no longer
being washed with our bodies and washed with our rags and
washed with our prayers and washed with our practices and washed
with our actions and our lifestyle, but we are washed by Jesus, we
don't have to dress up to get into the presence of God. God
help us. from those low-minded men who
think that dressing up in the assembly is something spiritually
good. Verse 23, and I've run out of
time, but I've got to finish this verse. This is our confession of hope,
Jesus Christ, so let us hold fast the confession of our hope
without wavering. And the answer to how is right
there, for he who promised is faithful. Now the question on the table
for most people, then what are we supposed to be doing? He's
about to tell us, and let us consider. But before we can do anything
together, we must understand how we stand together. Before
we can interact and love each other, we must understand how
we all ended up in the same place. and that the cohesion of our
unity, of our intimacy, even though it does come with protection,
it comes with accountability, it has those things, it has maturity
as its goal. We are to grow up in every way
to the stature of Christ, these things. We don't confuse the
two. Our confidence must be in the finished work of Jesus, and
we should never, even in our best of days, think that the
greatest of our days of worship and sinlessness ever merit anything. If they don't merit anything,
they don't count for anything, and if they don't count for anything,
then we would still be judged guilty of sinner if we were measured
by them. But we're not. Our confession
of hope, from which we should not slide to the left or right,
is that He who promised is faithful. He is faithful. He is faithful. Paul says it
to Timothy when he says it this way, if we deny Him, He'll deny
us. If we do this, He'll do that.
If we are faithless, He remains faithful. For He cannot deny
Himself. He cannot deny Himself. And of course, Paul is quoting
a lot of Scripture. referencing a lot of things over
in 2 Timothy chapter 2 when he talks about this stuff. He remains faithful because he
cannot deny who he is. He cannot undo what he accomplished.
He cannot take back what he purchased. He cannot get rid of that which
belongs to him. He cannot remove his blood from
anyone for whom it was shed. Now do you see how hard a task
that is to rest in that? It'd be like me telling you to
control your breathing so you can slow down your heart. I've
been working on that for a long time. And when I'm really thinking
about it, I think I get it, but I don't. It'd be like me telling you only
blink six times a minute. All of a sudden you realize you're
blinking. I'm not blinking. Now I'm blinking too much. Suddenly
when you focus on your eyes blinking, when you focus on your breath
or how deep it is or how shallow it is, you focus on, you know,
are my lips dry? Oh gosh, I don't know. I mean,
then all of a sudden it becomes a centerpiece of our conscience
and we're there, we're looking and we're doing. When I say,
just rest, Christ is faithful. He saved you. We're looking for that sensation. What am I putting my mind on?
How am I supposed to stand? What's my faith look like? You
ever been there and you just don't really know how to stand?
Get shoved out on the stage. It's time for your speech. I mean, you don't know what to
do. You're just sort of awkward. Faith in Jesus Christ is awkward
to the flesh because it doesn't work with what we're accustomed
to doing. It's antithetical to the very
nature that we now must come around and have some kind of
control over something or focus on something with our lives.
But focusing on the promise of life in Jesus Christ means that
we do nothing. And when we are condemned, we
go up and say, hey pops, the blood of Jesus satisfied your
wrath for me. I know I just got through cussing
my mama out. And I hate that, but I didn't
when I was doing it. Let's be honest, believers. Don't
pretend like when we're in the middle of sin that we just hated
it the whole time. If we hated it, we wouldn't do
it. There are foods I hate I don't eat. I don't get halfway through
something nasty and go, oh, I didn't know I was eating this. Let's be honest. Christ is faithful. Sit, rest. And how we do that
is by the power of God. He grants us the change of mind,
which is the word repentance, so that we believe. in the confidence
that we have and the assurance we have in the finished work
of Jesus that's the work of God and that's what Paul's about
to explain but as we rest there there is something that we can
be doing and that's what his that's what verse 24 begins to
pick up so let's hear it and then we'll pray and as we rest
in the promises of the one who is faithful who finished the
work and bought us let us consider let us think about Instead of
thinking about how we're resting, let us think about how we can
stir each other up to love and to good deeds. Not neglecting
to meet together as some are in the habit of doing, but rather
encouraging one another and more and more and more encouragement
as we see the day of judgment drawing near. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, for your
mercy, for the beauty of all that you are and all that you
have accomplished and all that you have revealed. Lord, the
ultimate end of all things is, as we've seen throughout history
and even in the Word, your glory to be seen as you are. But Father,
you have shown us that glory in the sending of your Son to
redeem a people for yourself whom you have loved forever.
So in that we rest and we war and we work and we love and we
fail. But Father, our assurance is
never, ever fleeting. When we are secure in Christ,
even when we feel like it is so, even when our confidence
wanes, you are faithful. And you will
not lose one for whom Christ died. And it's in his name we
pray. Amen.