Hebrews 10:19-26
Our reading of scripture today
is from the New Testament, the book of Hebrews, chapter 10,
verses 19 through 25. Let me invite you to turn there. It’s been since maybe middle
of May since we were last in Hebrews. And a break is always
good when you’re making your way through a book, because sometimes
it can feel a bit monotonous. But it’s good to be back. And
the point where we find ourselves today in the book of Hebrews
is a turning point in the book. The book turns from speaking
of doctrine or theology about Christ and moves now towards
how the Christian ought to live based on all the things we have
learned about the doctrine of Christ. And so keep that in mind
as we hear from God’s Word. Let’s read together from the
19th verse of chapter 10. 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 up for us through the
curtain, that is through his flesh. And since we have a great
high priest over the house of God, 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. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without
wavering for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider
how to stir up 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. Amen. This is God’s holy and
inspired word written for us. Let’s pray. God, our heavenly
father, we do thank you for your word. That it is from your very
lips, from your breath, it is for us. And as we confessed earlier,
the way that we may glorify and enjoy you, the way we may know
how to live life and serve is is by your word. And in a world
that is abandoning your word and its authority, we come now
to bow before it. to bend low and submit to it. And so we take your yoke upon
us. So, Father, feed us, speak to us, nourish us, load us down
with the burden of our duty, for it will be a delight to us
that we may serve you before the watching world. Help us.
Give us grace. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Maybe you’ve said
these words before, don’t give me doctrine, give me something
practical. I don’t want to hear doctrine
and theology, just tell me how to live Monday through Friday
and on Saturdays. Give me something that will help
me with the work week. Give me something that will help
me as I’m pulling my hair out in frustration with my children. Give me something that will help
me in whatever sphere or relationship you find yourselves in during
the week. Give me something that will help
me with life. Well, let me encourage you if
you have said that before. If that is your way of thinking,
and it has been mine before I confess it, let me encourage you in this
way. Doctrine is for life. Theology is for living. God’s Word, truths about God,
our theology, our Bible, our Westminster standards, it is
not a waste of our time. For it feeds us, it nourishes
us, it shapes our mind, it encourages our hearts, and it does indeed
help us live Monday through Friday, Saturday, especially Sundays. It helps us live according to
the way that God would have us live and please Him. There are
a couple of ways to note this distinction. We say that the
Word of God is our only rule of faith, and practice. It’s our rule of faith, what
we are to believe, the doctrine of God, the history or the meaning
of salvation, the truths about what the Word teaches. But it’s
for life, faith and life, faith and practice. It informs, yes,
who God is. But it also teaches us how to
live life before and faith in life. Doctrine and duty are two
distinctions, but they are necessary and together. In chapter 10,
verses 19 through 25 in Hebrews, we are moving from one section
of this book to the other. We’re moving from doctrine to
duty, from faith to practice. And I hope you’ll see very clearly
that the writer of Hebrews, whoever he was, is telling you that you
need to live your life out of the facts about Jesus. Out of
the facts about Jesus being better than Moses. Jesus being a better
priest than the Levitical priesthood, a priest of the order of Melchizedek. All of the things we have looked
at showing us who Jesus is and what he’s done will help you
live your life faithfully. And so as we make our way through
this last section of Hebrews, you’ll understand why the great
chapter 11, the heroes of the faith live like Abraham, live
like Sarah. They believed in the doctrines.
But it informed their life in a radical way that helped them
persevere to the very end. And so now God Himself uses them
as examples to us. So this last little section of
Hebrews, we’ll spend the next little while making our way through
it. And you’ll hear exhortations. of how to live the Christian
life, but it will all be based on who Jesus is and what he’s
done as explained in the first 10 chapters of the book of Hebrews. Jesus’ person, Jesus’ work, Jesus’
benefits that he has obtained and procured for you on the cross
will help you live a faithful Christian life. Now, we don’t
know a whole lot about the audience of Hebrews, but we can guess
this, we can surmise this. They were Christians who were
suffering greatly for their faith. They were persecuted. Many of
them even faced death. They were enduring hardships
and persecutions. And so now the writer of Hebrews
is saying to them, and remember this is a long sermon, this Hebrews
epistle. He’s saying to them, little flock,
Or as he addresses them in verse 19, brothers, Christians, dear
saints of God. since we have all these truths
about Jesus, who he is and what he’s done, therefore I want you
to live in a certain way. Now before he gives the three
exhortations, which we’ll consider today, those exhortations come
in verse 23 and 24 and 25, he’s going to remind them of a little
bit of the truth that he has just spent ten chapters telling
them. So before we get into the three
exhortations to the Christians, how they ought to live, he’s
going to remind them of doctrine. And he’s going to say to them,
you have boldness and confidence. You have authorization to enter
into the presence of God, to go to the most holy place, to
enter the holy of holies because you have the blood of Jesus.
His flesh was torn. His body was killed. He laid
in the grave in order that you might have access to him. The
curtain was torn in two on the day of atonement. The curtain
was ripped in part and access full and free and final access
was granted to us into the heavenly places because Jesus died. He
fulfilled the law. He tore the curtain in two and
he entered into the holy places at his ascension. And therefore
you have access. One of the things we need to
remember is amazing grace. God has saved you. And He has
given you many gifts. One of those many gifts is access
into His holy presence. And he says a second thing, not
only do we have boldness or confidence and authorization to enter the
most holy place into the presence of God, we are served by a great
high priest who is over the house of God. We are not served by
any ordinary man of the Levitical priesthood, not any child of
the son of Aaron. We are served by the merciful,
faithful, sinless. High Priest Jesus, who is after
the order of Melchizedek. He atoned for your sins on the
cross. He rose again from the dead.
He ascended at the right hand of God the Father. And he is
a priest who is not standing in an altar, but he is a priest
who is sitting down. Because His priestly work of
atonement is done. There is priestly work He’s still
doing. He’s praying for you. He is pleading for you. He’s
cheering you on. He is hearing your confession
and offering it up to the Father. But as far as the work of atonement
for your sins, it is finished. It is done. It is complete. And
so when we hear the three exhortations in this little section of Hebrews,
we hear them in light of the fact that we can draw near to
God, we can enter His presence, and that we are served by a most
faithful High Priest, even Jesus our Savior. So what are these
three exhortations? What does this writer tell us
about how we ought to live the Christian life based on the theology
of Jesus? Well, the first exhortation is
this. We are exhorted to draw near to God. Look, if you will,
with me at verse 22. Verse 22 tells us this, let us
draw near with a heart, 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. The writer of Hebrews
is exhorting us as Christians, come near to God, draw near to
him, approach his mercy seat, go into the holy of holies, come
close to the holy one of Israel. Now that is a strange exhortation
to these Hebrews, for they know Exodus 19. Don’t come near. There are boundaries. You don’t
come near the mountain or the presence of God or you will die. God will break out against you
and he will put you to death just as he did Nadab and Abihu
or just as he did Uzzah. He will execute you. He will
put you to death. He will strike you dead. And
now He’s saying to those familiar with those sorts of passages,
come near. Draw near. Approach the mercy
seat. No more message of fear. No more
exhortation to keep away. No more command, do not draw
near or you will die. And how does He say we approach
Him? We approach God. We draw near with a true heart.
in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from
an evil conscience. You see, God has done a mighty
work in us through the work of Jesus and redemption and through
the application of that work in each of our lives by the Holy
Spirit. If you’re a Christian, God has been at work in you mightily. He is still at work in you mightily,
but He has given you a true heart. He has sprinkled you clean and
freed you from an evil conscience. He has given you full assurance
of faith and He has washed your bodies with pure water. That
is an amazing set of facts. And based on that amazing set
of facts of what God in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit
has done in you, you can draw near to God. You no longer have
to fear the mountain or the thunder and the lightning and the commands
and the boundaries for those boundaries are gone. And God
no longer says, keep out, stay away. He says, draw near, come
near me. That’s an amazing. fact for us
as Christians, for our sin, our original sin that we inherited
from Adam, our actual sins committed in our bodies have alienated
us from God. But if we by faith are resting
in Jesus alone for our salvation, we have been brought near to
God. We have been brought near. We who are alienated have been
brought near. There’s been reconciliation.
when you were converted, when you came to faith in Jesus, when
you recognized that you were a sinner in God’s sight and deserving
of His wrath and His justice and His full punishment for all
eternity, when you recognized that and realized that Jesus,
the Savior, could save you, and you laid hold of Him by faith,
believing that His work on the cross could pay for your sins,
when you came to faith, what an amazing moment that was. At
a very specific moment in human history, in redemptive history,
you came to faith in Christ and God saved you. But that faith
is an ongoing faith. And we’ll see that in the chapters
ahead. By faith, Abraham. By faith, Noah. By faith, Sarah.
By faith, the children of Israel. By faith, they lived. So you
need that initial faith, that faith that saves you. But you
need ongoing faith. ongoing boldness to live the
Christian life. And he’s saying, draw near, looking
to the work of Jesus. Draw near to God and enter the
throne room, the very throne room of God. Now, what does that
look like? What does it look like to draw
near? None of you can get in your Chevrolet or your Honda
or on your bicycle or on your own two feet. None of you can
walk into the Holy of Holies. It’s not at a location accessible
to us. least not yet physically, but
spiritually. We can enter the presence of
God. You have come to worship today. And in just a chapter
or two, God is going to tell the worshipers in the book of
Hebrews, you have not come to Mount Sinai. You have not come
to Moses. You’ve not come to the law. You’ve
not come to the thunder and the lightnings. You have come to
the New Jerusalem. You have come to Mount Zion that
is in heaven where God is and where the saints who have gone
before us who possessed faith in Christ are there worshiping.
That’s the reality. And so when we gather for worship,
God greets us. Grace to you and peace from God,
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ through the fellowship
of the Spirit. God greets us. He calls us into his presence.
Come, let us worship. Let us bow down before him and
worship at his footstool. We can enter the presence of
God when you confess your sins. As you read your Bibles, as you
make your prayers known to God during the week, you are drawing
near to God through the blood of Jesus into the Holy of Holies.
And that is only because of Jesus. What a great and special privilege
that is. Some of you may have season tickets
to a ballgame. to a symphony, to a theme park,
to some sort of thing. And you can purchase those season
tickets, and you can use them well every game time you go,
every event you’re there. But you can also put them in
a drawer and forget them. And let me encourage you, brothers
and sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ, who have an eternal path
into the Holy of Holies, do not neglect that gift. The writer
of Hebrews is exhorting these Christians, draw near to God. Draw near to God. On the Lord’s
Day. In your private time, every chance
you get, draw near into the presence of God. So we are exhorted to
draw near to God. The second exhortation comes
in verse twenty three, we are exhorted to hold on to our faith. Verse twenty three says, let
us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for
he who promised is faithful. Remember when you first came
to Christ, you were you were zealous. You were you were energetic. You couldn’t believe what God
and Christ had done for you. Your faith was strong. Your energy
was up. You were in church. You were
at the bookstore buying Bibles, reading books, listening to sermons.
Your zeal was great. But sometimes in the Christian
life, that wanes, it fades. And he’s saying, hold fast to
your confession. Hold fast to that which you first
believed when you came to Christ. In a sense, he’s saying, keep
building on that foundation. Build it one block up, higher
and higher, until your foundation is strong, and your building
is high, and your faith is like a giant edifice. showing the
world who you are and what you believe. Grow. Strengthen yourself. Don’t grow weary in growing in
the faith. Don’t think I have learned it
all. Don’t say I’ve got this religion by the tail. and I’ve
mastered it. No, moment by moment, day after
day, until you die, God is at work sanctifying you. He is at
work making you holy. He is at work building you up
in the knowledge of who He is and what He’s done and what He
requires of you. So grow in grace. Some of you
may remember, what, 25 years ago when Iraq invaded Kuwait
and some of the world’s leaders were gathering saying, what shall
we do about this? And our own president, George
H.W. Bush, was with Margaret Thatcher.
And apparently, as the story goes, she leaned over to him
and said, George, this is no time to go wobbly on me. And
that’s exactly what the writer of Hebrews is saying to you Christians.
Don’t go wobbly. Don’t let the Word of the world,
the teachings of the world, don’t let poor influences shape your
thinking. Let the Word of God shape you.
Hold fast to the confession that you first made, not wavering. Not going wobbly. And notice
how he ends that exhortation, God is faithful. What is the
implication? You be faithful. God is faithful. You be faithful. Don’t go wobbly.
Don’t let your faith in Christ and the beliefs that you have
be shaped by the world and other voices speaking at you. Grow
stronger and stronger and deeper in the faith. I was commenting
to a friend of mine this week. We went to school together. We
talk a couple times a year about our common ministries, our unique
ministries. And I said to him, his name is
Brian also, I said, Brian, I said, I don’t know what it is, but
the older I get, the more I read the Bible, the more conservative
I get. And he said, you know, that’s
funny. In the ministry context where I am, I am challenged over
and over. To become more liberal. to become more mainline, to be
less biblical, to be less faithful. And he said, I’m glad to hear
you say that. He said, I need to be challenged by you to be
more conservative. And then as we talked a little
bit, we said, no, we need to challenge each other to be biblical.
And if that’s conservative, fine, but let’s not let ourselves stray
away from the faith once and for all handed down to the saints.
but that faith that we both first, at some point in time in our
lives, professed in Christ. Don’t go wobbly. God is faithful. You be faithful. Friends, life
is a journey. We are exiles. We are not home. We are pilgrims in a strange
and foreign land. And all that will come upon us,
all the voices and teachings and advice that we can be given
from the world, it can lead you astray. It can take you on the
wrong path. So let me encourage you, as you
hold fast your confession, keep your eyes on the New Jerusalem. Keep your eyes on heaven. That
is our destination. Don’t put your eyes on houses
that will one day waste away, or money that will disappear,
or gold that will be totally consumed and gone. Put your eyes
on Jerusalem. Put your eyes on Jesus. Step
by step, walk to heaven, holding fast, not being wobbly, holding
fast to the confession that you once professed. Yes, you’ll have
troubles. Yes, there will be ups and downs.
Yes, there will be positives and negatives in life. Yes, you
will face hardship and even death. And yes, you will fall short.
of God’s glory, you will sin. But there’s faith and there’s
repentance. But by faith in the faithful one, let us walk towards
heaven and not go wobbly. Well, there’s a third and final
exhortation. We are exhorted to finally to stir up one another
in the faith. This is a corporate exhortation.
This is saying to us. One another, you, dear brother
and sister, you fellow traveler, member of 1st ARP Burlington.
We must strive together to win the Christian life. Look at what
he says in verses 24 and 25. He says, Let us consider how
to stir up one another, to love and to good works, not neglecting
to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one
another all the more as you see the day drawing near. Friends,
the Christian life is a journey, and we do not go that journey
alone. We go together. And so, what are we doing here
together? We’re worshiping together. We’re confessing together. We’re
praying together. We’re hearing together. Well, what can we do
after worship to encourage one another? Did you hear what the
Word of God said to us today? Can I pray with you? Can I encourage
you in some way? Will you encourage me? We can
speak to one another. We can say, I haven’t seen you
in worship in a while. Where have you been? I’ve missed
you. I’ve missed your presence. You
know, we can’t do the one another challenges or commands in the
Scriptures unless we’re together. And so the Christian life is
long and it’s best traveled together in a group. It’s a corporate
journey. And this word tells us, this
third exhortation tells us to stir up one another. Or you could
say we’re to provoke one another, to spur one another on. It gives you the image of a cowboy
kicking each other in the leg, so to speak. We’re to spur one
another. We’re to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
to the assembling together. And so what do we just say and
do with one another? Haven’t seen you. How’s your faith? Are you holding
fast to your confession? How’s your Bible study? How’s
your Christian life? How’s your work? How’s your parenting? How’s
your family life? How’s your evangelism? We’re to speak of
biblical Christian things, so that as we journey together,
we can encourage one another, not just to be together, but
to be doing and obeying the commands of God. Good question to ask
young people. Are you obeying your parents?
Maybe to ask a person in the workforce, how are you serving
your boss? Or if you have those under you,
are you treating people fairly? We can ask biblical questions
into each other’s lives and say, until the Lord Jesus comes or
until he takes me home, how can we as a community live together
faithfully in obedience to God’s holy word? Why is it that we
don’t come to church? Why is it that we forsake the
assembling together? Why is it that we aren’t in the
Lord’s house on the Lord’s day with the Lord’s people? There’s
all kinds of reasons. There may be all kinds of reasons
why they weren’t here in this chapter of Hebrews. Some won’t. Some can’t. Some don’t. They’re
busy. They’re lazy. They’re not as
committed to the Christian faith as they once were. And it could
be in the case of these Hebrew saints that persecution hindered
them. It could have cost them their
lives to come to church. Now, that is not a reason that
any of us have for not attending worship. But you see what he’s
saying. It’s important to be together,
to worship together, to encourage and exhort one another. Let me
encourage you in this way. Now, let me exhort you in this
way. Do you know what heaven is? Heaven. is the eternal gathering of the
saints of God who have been bought by the blood of Jesus. And every
one of us, I’m sure, is excited about heaven. We can’t wait to
get there. We know that as our final end. Friends, you know
what heaven is? It is church for eternity. And if we don’t
like church, if we skip church in this life, if we are not together,
what are we going to do? forever in heaven. We’re going
to be in church before the presence of God, with the people of God.
So let me encourage you to think that way. Let’s gather together. Let’s encourage one another.
Let’s serve one another. And let’s make it to the finish
line together. Maybe you’ve said before, don’t
just give me doctrine, give me something practical for life.
Do you see what the writer of Hebrews is doing now, what God
is doing? The doctrine is Jesus, your great
high priest, your savior, the one who has atoned for your sins,
the one who eternally is the high priest over the house of
God for you. Draw near to God. Hold fast to
your confession. Encourage one another in the
faith. Friends, you can’t get more real and practical than
that. And how does he end the passage?
He says, do all of this as you see the great day approaching.
Friends, Jesus is coming again and he’s coming to gather his
church as a bride to himself. And He knows how hard it will
be for you to faithfully persevere to the end. And so He gives you,
His people, this word. Let us pray together. Our God
and Heavenly Father, we thank You that You speak to us. And
in this case, like a father would to his children, exhorting us
to do the right thing. So help us draw near. Help us
to hold fast our confession. And we pray that you would help
us, help us to exhort and encourage one another as we see the day
approaching to live faithful Christian lives by your grace
and for your glory. May we do this in Jesus name.
Amen. Let’s stand together as we respond to God’s holy word
and sing together number 432 from every stormy wind that blows. It’s a hymn that is based on
the passage from Hebrews from chapter 10, verse 19. Let’s sing
together.