One of most harmful things we can do in life is give little thought to how crucial the choices we make are. Just this week we have been able to see two celebrities in the news who may be facing time in prison because of their actions, and as I write this I can reflect on conversation I’ve had this week with a friend whose daughter is choosing to walk toward great sin and hear a song about final judgment sung by someone who recently died and now sees the importance of responding correctly to the coming judgment. We, no doubt, give too little thought to how crucial our choices are.

In Hebrews 10:26-39, the author of Hebrews calls his readers to come face-to-face with this reality. He has told them how to respond correctly to the work of Christ in verses 10:19-25, and now he is reminding them again what is at stake with their choice.

In this regard, this text is a sobering one. And if it does not cause us to reflect deeply on our decisions, choices, and response to God’s commands, then we have not truly heard it. This is a text we all need to hear, and for some of us, maybe we are in a specific point of looking at our lives, seeing disobedience, and needing this text to give us warning, direction, and encouragement to walk rightly. This is indeed my longing this morning. My prayer is that in hearing this text today, the Lord might raise us up to begin to labor intently, passionately, and intentionally to live all of our lives in a quest for obedience, keeping an eye on just how crucial responding rightly to the Lord is.

Therefore, I want us to listen to this text very directly this morning, allowing it to rest on our hearts, and demanding that we respond correctly. With that said, let us now turn to the specific components of the message of the text.

This section of Hebrews can be broken down rather simply as verses 26-31 pose a warning for those who will not respond correctly to the demand of the gospel, verses 32-34 serve as an encouragement to reflect back on a situation and time from which one might draw strength, and verses 35-39 exhort the reader to realize what is at stake and walk in obedience. Therefore, let us hear the message of the text.

If you do not respond appropriately to the gospel of Christ know that you have walked away from any hope of eternal salvation and that a fearful judgment awaits you

The author of Hebrews wants his readers to know that he has not made his argument for the superiority of Christ’s priesthood, covenant, work, and accomplishments just so they could think he is a good arguer or understand what he is saying but that they might respond appropriately to the gospel. And this is important, for if they do not, then they walk away from any hope of salvation and a fearful judgment awaits them. He says, in essence, we’re not playing games here.

They’ve heard the truth, now they must respond in obedience to the truth, and if they don’t there are great consequences. He writes in 25-26, “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.”

Now, here he’s not saying that if you deliberately commit sin after professing Christ all hope is lost, for then all of us would sit here today hopeless. Rather, he is describing a deliberate lifestyle of sin that says, “I am choosing to disobey Christ and reject his lordship over my life.” That is what the Hebrews were bordering on saying and doing (so it seems), and the author of Hebrews wants them to see that if they do so, judgment will remain.

And should they doubt the seriousness and reality of such judgment, he lays out his basis for why they should be very afraid of judgment by comparing judgment under the old covenant and the new. He writes in verses 28-29, “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 one who has spurned the Son of God and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the Spirit of grace?”

He has shown how the new covenant is utterly superior to the old, and yet if God punished those rejecting the law of Moses, how much worse will the punishment be for those who reject Christ – spurning the Son of God, profaning his blood, and outraging the Spirit of Grace?

Do not have a picture of God who is so disposed to serving his creation that in the end he will overlook our spurning of his Son. That is not the kind of God we serve. That conception is developed from the pits of hell and is in utter opposition to the revelation of God we see in his Word. God has said in Deuteronomy 32:35-36 that which is quoted here in verse 30, namely, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay … The Lord will judge his people.” Therefore, know God’s judgment is sure and it will be without mercy. There will be no hint of mercy when God ultimately judges those who have spurned his Son, profaned the shed blood of Christ, and outraged the Spirit of grace. Those who do such will only know his wrath, and no one will be able to withstand such judgment. Therefore, the author of Hebrews rightly concludes: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (31).

This must have an impact on our evangelism. For those who attempt to share the gospel simply by saying, “God loves you and wants you to believe in his Son and love him” has only shared a half-truth. And as Packer has masterfully written, “A half-truth masqueraded as the whole truth, is a complete untruth.”

If you were in a situation in which a your child was about to walk into a room where he would be wisped into a room of flames which would kill him would you dare say to him, “Don’t go into the room because I love you and would rather you walk over here and give me a hug”? No. You may tell him that, but you would reiterate again and again the cost of walking through the door. Therefore, we cannot adequately say we love people if in our sharing of the gospel we reduce it to a better life or a request of God who wants to help them out. No, we must present the gospel as a command of God to place one’s faith in the work of Christ which, if rejected, leaves one in a position where he awaits a fearful inescapable judgment of God’s merciless wrath in hell for all eternity. For God will do no less for those who have spurned his Son. That is what the author of Hebrews wants his readers to see, it’s what we must long for others to see, and it’s what we ourselves must see this morning, for if we have rejected Christ and obedience to him we only deceive ourselves to claim that we have saving faith.

And I think it is no overstatement to say that many who have made a profession of faith, walk in complete disobedience to Christ’s lordship, and think they’re eternally okay will no this merciless judgment which the author of Hebrews has discussed.

Now, you may be in a position of saying, “I believe I do indeed know the Lord, and yet I have been living in a position somewhat similar to those addressed in this letter. I’ve chosen sin often, I’m struggling, and I just don’t know where to start so that my heart longs to obey and walks in obedience to the Lord?” The author of Hebrews aids us here to, giving his readers (and us) an exhortation so as to motivate us to obedience.

Our fight for obedience will be aided by remembering the past obedience and by looking to the future

His exhortation to them is to look back and to look forward. He wants them to look back, to remember, to recall former days when they walked in obedience, held tight to their faith in Christ, and stood firm despite great suffering. And in looking back, they will see that they found strength for radical obedience by looking to what awaits them.

He writes, “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 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” (32-34).

Apparently after they had first heard the gospel and professed faith in Christ, their struggles were intense. They were mocked, ridiculed, insulted, possibly beaten and abused, and maybe even had their lives sought after by authorities. And at times they even decided to identify themselves with those who were being punished because of their confession and suffered more. That is, they beheld those suffering for claiming Christ and made sure those inflicting the suffering knew they were in the same camp. They had gone to associate and to aid those in prison (possibly taking food and comforts to them), and in so doing, they had their property confiscated. I mean, this isn’t the picture of simply somebody disagreeing with what you believed. They suffered. Yet they stood and obeyed and rejoiced in the midst of suffering. How? They rejoiced because they knew that no matter what happened with their possessions and lives here, they had a possession of eternal life with Christ that awaited them. They knew what Luther wrote, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill, his truth abideth still, his kingdom is forever.”

So the author of Hebrews wants them to look back those times and live with that same kind of faith again by allowing their faith in the reward of Christ to allow them to live in radical obedience despite the cost in this life.

You might be able to look back to similar instances in your life this morning. Maybe you can recall times when you walked in obedience and sacrificed and embraced the cost of obedience because you knew and saw clearly that eternity is real and it awaits you. You fasted and prayed because you knew you needed intimacy with Christ more than you needed food for your body. You sought to evangelize your neighbors because you knew that despite the ridicule you longed to honor Christ and for them to know him as well. You gave of your resources because you trusted God more than you trusted your ability to manage your resources yourself. You got up early and meditated on the Word and labored in prayer because you knew that to go without sleep was immeasurably less cost than starving your soul from knowing God’s Word and communing with him. You turned off the television because you knew there was immeasurably more reward in investing in eternal matters. You labored in matters of service because you knew that true greatness in the kingdom is seen in lowering ourselves to serving all others here.

And maybe you’ve slowly lost that perspective and consequently lost that lifestyle. This morning recall those times and begin again to know the reality of the future and to live passionately and radically obedient because the hope that awaits you is real before your eyes. That is the challenge issued to the original recipients of the letter and it is what we need to hear as well.

This morning, realize the importance of persevering faith and hold fast to the sureness of hope that awaits you firm until the end

The author follows his exhortation to recall the former days when they hoped in eternity by writing, “Therefore, do not throw away your confidence which has great reward” (35). Do not walk away now from holding fast to Christ.

But you may be saying, “But, again, I miss the connection as to why professing believers need to hear the warning you began with and why this is such a crucial warning. For is it not that we are saved simply by faith?”

Yes, we are simply saved by faith. I am not saying anything different from that. But what I am saying is that which James reminds us and which this letter throughout has reminded us: true saving faith is present in those who continue to have faith. Or to say it a different way, justifying faith will always show itself in persevering faith. So if one does not have persevering faith, he is fooling himself to think he has had justifying faith.

Thus, the author of Hebrews writes, “For you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For ‘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’” (36-38).

Therefore, I want us to be a group that shows that we have indeed been justified by persevering in our faith and not shrinking back from holding fast to Christ. And I believe we will. As the author of Hebrews writes, “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who have faith and preserve their souls,” so I believe I am speaking to a people that God has indeed saved, whom he will preserve, and who will continue to hold fast to faith in Christ which will show in their continuing obedience to him.

Therefore, this morning, realize the great judgment that awaits those who reject Christ, remember those days when you obeyed in great faith in the eternal hope and imitate such faith again in holding fast and enduring in faith, for we are “of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”

And let us both express our desire to obey as well as remember God’s grace that will sustain us in obedience as we come to the table. Amen.

ANOTHER CALL TO PERSEVERING FAITH

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