Hebrews 10:19-25

So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

We have gone through a long section from basically chapter 6, verse 13, all the way through till 1018.

We've covered what we would call the advanced teachings of this pastor.

Do you remember back at the beginning of chapter 6?

He's just like, you know, I want to go on to the to the deep stuff, but we've got to stay with the elementary teachings of Christ for right now.

And so he really kind of sets the stage for this advanced teaching.

And that's the material that we've covered.

He's looked at the priesthood of Melchizedek and how Jesus came after the order of Melchizedek.

And then we have the heavenly priesthood.

The heavenly priesthood and how Jesus is serving, he's our high priest, but not in an earthly temple, but he's serving in a heavenly temple.

In fact, he says, hey, this earthly tabernacle is just foreshadowing this heavenly reality that's going on.

He talked about the new covenant versus the old covenant and how it's a better covenant that our high priest Jesus serves according to this new covenant that's better from the old.

He talked about the sacrifices and how the under the old covenant there was this repetition of sacrifices that even in Psalm 40, God said, Look, you know, I'm not pleased.

This is not what deals with sin.

The bulls and goats, and Jesus came and he sacrificed and offered himself.

And then we looked at the idea of the sacrifices and then the heavenly tabernacle as well.

I s have this summary here.

These passages from Hebrews 6, 13 through 1018 present an overview of the transformative power of God's promise, the supremacy of Christ's priesthood, the potency of his sacrifice under the new covenant.

They underscore the inadequacy of the old covenant and elevate the new covenant, solidifying our hope and faith in Jesus, our high priest and sacrifice.

So that's where we have been.

Everybody got their Bibles?

Good.

I wanted to give you a chance to settle.

Before we get into Hebrews, though, I just want to say Happy Mother's Day.

We are so grateful for you, mothers.

I don't think there's a harder job.

Yeah, thank you.

So on your way out, we have a gift for you that my wife has put together, and uh you can grab it on your way out.

But uh, moms, thank you for your hard work, and I do pray that you um have a legacy, right?

There's nothing like being able to look back and go, yes, there is fruit that remains from my life.

And that's only something that we're able to accomplish by that cooperation with the Holy Spirit, right?

And so my prayer for you is that you just have this deep sense of reward in your own personal life as you um trust the Lord and trust your kids and your grandkids to the Lord.

So thank you so much for um your sacrifice.

Um before we look at Hebrews chapter 10, I want to actually draw your attention and set the stage with Genesis chapter 3, verses 8 through 11.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention Genesis 3:8–11

Genesis 3, 8 through 11.

It says this then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.

And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, Where are you?

And he said, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

Then he asked, Who told you that you were naked?

Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

You're probably familiar with this passage.

This happens right after Adam and Eve take the forbidden fruit.

They eat the fruit, and what do we see them doing in their relationship with God?

They're running away, right?

They're afraid, they realize that they're naked before God and they're hiding from God.

God's calling out to them, saying, Where are you?

Did you eat the fruit from the tree?

But I want you to see that picture because this is the beginning of the problem with humanity.

That humanity is separated from God because of sin.

And so your human experience is one where you didn't go from being in a right relationship with God where you ate a piece of fruit and then were separated.

That was not your experience.

Instead, you were born into the midst of brokenness.

You were far from God when you were born.

You were isolated, and there came a point in your life, or maybe there still is yet to be a point, where you decide that you're ready to take God's rescue and to be restored back.

The Bible uses the term reconciliation, to be reconciled back to God.

Now, before Jesus, there was no means for proper reconciliation.

There was the life of faith that could be lived by the saints, like Abraham and David and Samson, all deeply broken people who trusted God.

They lived by faith, and that's what made them pleasing in God's eyes, but they were yet anticipating the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross in order that they too could be reconciled back to God.

So Adam and Eve here in the garden are in this place where they're running away from God, running away from his presence, and from this point on, God is pursuing humanity, wanting them to draw close.

Let's look at Hebrews chapter 10, 19 through 25.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

I'll read it and you can follow along here on the screen.

It says, Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, he has inaugurated for us a new and living way 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, in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed in pure water.

Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful.

And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other all the more as you see the day approaching.

This application builds on the material that has been covered for us for the last few months.

There is in this call, there's you see the word repeated three times, let us, let us, let us.

It's this let us draw near, let us hold on to the confession of our faith without or the confession of our hope without wavering, and let us provoke love and good works with each other.

Let me just give that to you again because I want that to be in front of you.

We're going to take that first section, verses 19 through 22.

And this is a um long sentence.

Let's just say that.

It's a long sentence, but it is at its core is the idea, let us draw near.

The pastor here, your spiritual coach, my spiritual coach, is saying to you and I, hey, let us draw near to God.

Now, there is an aspect in our obedience to that command where we have to stop taking it for granted.

Maybe if you've grown up in a Christian context, the idea that God is approachable may be overly familiar and it's taken for granted in our own life.

This idea that we can bow our heads and we can talk to God is for many of us so familiar.

But if you were a Jew, it was not necessarily that familiar of an activity.

It was not something that would necessarily could be taken for granted.

Because again, remember, there's this priesthood that you've got to work through.

There is this the need for cleanliness in order to even participate in temple worship.

So you've got the moral things going on in your life.

Then you have like, hopefully, you don't have like scabies or psoriasis or some other kind of disease.

You're not on your period, and you know, there's other things going on with you.

Hopefully, like that's not getting in your way of drawing near.

There's all this stuff for the for the Jews that stood in the way of drawing near to God, being in his presence.

And you'd have to offer sacrifices and you'd have to have a priest do that on your behalf.

And then there is the high priest that could only go into God's presence once uh a year.

And so it's easy to take for granted this command.

Let's let us draw near.

Also, just remember I mentioned this a couple months ago that the way that this pastor oftentimes talks about spirituality is in the sense of um space, traversing space.

So he uses the analogy of our hearts or our having an anchor for our souls, as if there is this hope in the holiest of all that anchors our hearts.

There is in chapter 12 a race that is to be ran.

There is the image of a spiritual temple that we are crossing and that we are um that we're entering in.

Uh, here it's this call to draw near, to get in close proximity.

When you think of your own spiritual journey, what how do you conceptualize it?

Is it a traversing a space?

Is it a journey?

Is it a path?

Again, this pastor has that in mind for you and I, but before he says, draw near, he has three things, three things that set the stage, the basis for our drawing near.

The first is found here in verse 19.

Brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus.

That's the first thing.

You have a boldness that he's already explained.

Now, if you're new with us this morning or you haven't been with us for a long time, this is technical teaching that he's now taking and applying to your and my spirituality, saying you have a basis for boldness in your spiritual life.

When you relate to God, there should not be a timidity.

There should be humility, but no timidity in God's presence.

Instead, there should be this boldness to be in God's presence that is firmly based on the blood of Jesus.

Could we go so far as to say a timidity and a fearfulness is disrespectful to the blood of Jesus in our relationship with the Father?

Is it possible that if we really do not adopt this attitude of boldness, that we are not applying the blood of Jesus in our own lives?

That's the first thing that he puts in front of us is this boldness to enter the sanctuary because of the blood of Jesus.

The second basis for drawing near is that he has inaugurated for us a new and a living way through the curtain, that is to say, his flesh.

So he's again, he's using the image of the tabernacle.

Where was the curtain at?

Where was the curtain at?

Remember, what did it divide?

The holy place from the holiest of holies, right?

There's a curtain that's there.

And he has inaugurated a new way through the curtain.

What was the old way through the curtain?

Through the high priest, right?

That was the only way to get through the curtain.

But now there's a new way for you and I that's been inaugurated.

It's a new and a way that is alive through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.

Literally, his body, the pastor is saying, look, his body was the curtain.

And we talked about Jesus' body last week.

Remember?

So this is, imagine there was no break in between last week and this week, because Jesus said, quoting Psalm 40, you've prepared for me a body to do your will.

You don't delight in bulls and goats, the sacrifices of bulls and goats, but you've given me a body to do your will.

And that body, his flesh, is the curtain that was rent so that we could enter in.

Crazy symbolism because you remember when Jesus died, one of the things that happened when he was on the cross there was that the um it got dark, right?

It was dark for three hours, and the curtain in the temple was rent from top to bottom, symbolizing, again, this very picture.

If that occurred, I mean, isn't it crazy?

Like Jesus didn't just die on the cross and rise from the dead, but there's these miraculous like galactic things happening at the very time of his death that are super significant.

Again, the pastor here doesn't want to hang out in the technical stuff.

He wants you, he wants you to be getting close to draw near to God.

This is the second point.

This is the second point, is this new and living way through the curtain.

The third is in verse 21, where he says, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God.

Again, reiterating the ground we've covered for the last few chapters of Hebrews, that Jesus is our high priest.

So these are the three reasons.

We have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus.

He is inaugurated a new in a living way through the curtain of his flesh, and we have this great high priest.

And that brings us to verse 22, which says, on those grounds, let us draw near.

Let us draw near.

Christians, this means that we are called to come close to God.

But I know in in my life it's a busyness oftentimes.

It's a distraction.

Uh, it can be a just getting too much into my own thoughts.

It can be a poor prioritization of the pieces in my life, of just letting other things crowd out a nearness to God.

It can be the allowing and the kind of just placing my affections on things that are less than God.

Sometimes it's a sense of condemnation, of like, man, I just feel like I've screwed up or I haven't stuck to my commitments that I had and that I made with myself, and I don't feel like I can draw near.

But this pastor says, he says, on the grounds of what Jesus has done, draw near.

Do you see that the pastor is saying to you and I that it is not on you?

You're not disrupting the drawing near.

Jesus has paved the way for you to be near the Father.

Jesus has done the work.

He is your great high priest.

He is full-time employed and interested in you being near the Father.

And there is a simple obedience that needs to occur in our life.

Because not only has Jesus accomplished the work, but if you're a follower of Jesus, then the Bible says that the Spirit of God is in you, bearing witness to these things.

Literally, the momentum of God is in your life.

The person of God is drawing you into these things.

It is only our flesh and our disobedience that keeps us from this.

There's really, you want to obey this principle, there's just a yes, God, I'll obey this reality.

I'll let this be accomplished in my life.

Because you are deeply loved by God.

But the way in which we draw near to God has four components here in verse 22.

Do you see?

First he says, draw near with a true heart.

Well, you look at your heart and you go, well, I don't know.

Sometimes I don't even know what's going on in my heart.

Or looking at the second thing there is with a full assurance of faith.

Third thing, with our hearts sprinkled from an sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.

And the fourth thing is that our bodies are washed in pure water.

The image here, again, borrows heavily from the priest in how they were appointed to serve.

They would have these special stones that they would carry over their heart to symbolize the nation.

That they would carry on their hearts the nation into the presence of God.

And then he has this idea of this assurance of faith, hearts sprinkled from an evil.

The sprinkling here was key in the Levitical picture.

And then also there was a labor that was out, like a literally a bathtub where these guys would cleanse themselves with um before they would come and serve in the temple.

All of this, all of this is foreshadowed in the priests, but real for you and I.

What he's saying is that Jesus has done his part to pave the way, but then he's also come in and made you, he's placed you in a condition where you can draw near.

So Satan comes along and he looks at your life and he beats you up.

And he tells you your heart is not good enough to draw near.

You don't have strong enough faith.

He plagues you with doubt, with question marks.

Satan's in there taking away from you this sense of a cleansed conscience that, you know, remember that thing you did when you were 12?

Like, how could you draw near to God?

I mean, you can't draw near.

Everybody else can, but you did that thing when you were 12 years old, and you can't draw near.

That's what Satan says to you, right?

Or this idea that your bodies are washed.

I mean, our bodies, you may have a relationship with your body where you feel like, man, I cannot enter and draw near to God because of this thing about my body.

And yet, God has made a way through his son Jesus so that you are in the condition where you can draw near.

So Jesus paid for your entrance, and then the way, the the condition has been made right.

So that's the first part of this text.

Let us draw near.

These are not just ritualistic or ceremonial cleansings, but they reflect a profound inner transformation that occurs when we come to faith in Christ.

You have been changed.

If you're not yet a follower of Jesus and you're like, I don't know about this Christian thing because I'm messed up, you just need to know that God doesn't just die on the cross for your sins and then rise from the dead, but he goes to work inside of you, transforming you, so that you can be in his presence.

That's the first let us in this text.

But in verse 23, there is another command.

There's another command.

It's this command of holding on to the confession of our hope without wavering.

It says this let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful.

Since he who promised is faithful.

This is a simple substantiation.

You and I are called to hold on to our confession.

In fact, in Hebrews chapter 3, for us a few months ago, in Hebrews chapter 3, verse 6, he said the same thing.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention Hebrews 3:6

He says, Hold on to our confidence and the hope in which we boast.

There's this holding on to the work that God has done, our faith.

Again, as this pastor is working with these Christians, he's looking at them, and he's already, the material we've already covered, he says, you guys are you're distracted, you're you're drawing back, you're not alert, you're kind of like you're lethargic in your spirituality.

And he's calling them hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering.

There's a lot of things that happen in our lives.

And the parable of the sower says you can kind of put those things, the the attacks against your spiritual life into three categories, right?

One is trials.

Trials can come up and just discourage you from holding on to your confession of faith.

The second thing is just Satan comes with his lies.

Satan will lie to you about you, he'll lie to you about life, and he'll lie to you about others.

So Satan is going to work just as a liar trying to keep you from holding on to your confession of hope.

And then the third distraction is just the cares of this life.

Cares about career, making money, just earthly things that we get caught up in.

Probably the things that Jesus warns against in Matthew chapter 6, you know, what you're gonna wear, what you're gonna eat, where you're gonna live.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Those are the three things that get in the way of this holding on to the confession of our hope without wavering.

But do you see he gives a basis?

He says, do this since he who promised is faithful.

Our the gospel message that we believe that has has um that is our confession.

It's based on the faithful word of God, what God has promised to us.

Let's look at this um last this last section here, 24 and 25.

24 and 25 is the third let us.

So it's like we've spent like two months going through all this technical stuff on the priesthood, and now all of a sudden he's just like, look, here's what you need to do.

It's a lot of application in one short little spurt of verses.

Verse 24 and 25 talks about our relationships with one another.

Let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works.

And then he says, not neglecting to gather together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other all the more as you see the day approaching.

So this third, this third call to action could be summarized like this gather together.

And you guys are doing this.

Like the people who need to hear this are the ones who aren't here.

But but just so you know, like the Bible teaches, I spent time uh this week at the Compassion Center sitting with a guy who kind of understood the gospel message, this the last point, the confession of our faith.

But when I asked him about being involved in a church, he's just like, nah, you know, he just had not a great answer.

Like he's like, yeah, you know, if God wants to talk to me, you know, he can just kind of get through anytime.

He's got my number, he can call me, you know.

It's like, well, no, that's not what Christians do.

The Bible teaches that we are to gather together.

Now, here, this pastor says, When you're gathering together, here's what I want you to do.

Considering one another, I want you to provoke each other to be loving and to do good works, encouraging each other more and more as you have a vision of the end of life.

That's how I summarized it.

Here he says, but encourage each other all the more as you see the day approaching.

So, Christians, healthy Christians, are called to gather together.

There is an aspect to our spirituality.

I know this is not American Christianity, right?

We all want to think that, look, I've just listened to a Christian radio station, play a couple podcasts, and I'm good.

But really, the Bible is written, humanity is designed to be done in community, right?

And I've talked, I've talked in our membership classes about how broken that is and how difficult of a pursuit it is.

And I don't want to overly simplify and just say, listen, you all should just be a part of community.

But there's nothing, there's no part of the Bible where you're gonna find like a loophole or a small print that's gonna say you can be a follower of Jesus outside the community of faith.

We are called, I mean, the very picture, the image is that, and the reason we do baptism is because you're being brought into a community, right?

You're being brought into the community of faith.

Now, it doesn't mean it has to be a big church, it doesn't have to be a small church.

There just has there needs to be Christian relationships that are there and the the gathering together as doing church.

The bar is really low.

The Bible makes the bar like to be church, the bar is super, super low.

But it is this regular gathering together, this faithful gathering together, um, not neglecting, as he says here in verse 25.

Not neglecting, but gathering together, considering one another, provoking each other to be loving and to do good works.

What does that look like?

You're just encouraging each other, like let's go.

Let's go.

Like we often talk about talk about provoking in a negative sense, but I always think of it like it's just when when when I was some I got I used to get in trouble as a kid a lot, you know.

I know it's hard to believe.

But and one of the ways I got in trouble, I was like pro I was a provoker, right?

I'd prov I was the oldest uh brother and I would provoke my little brothers.

And that that provoking was like just getting them upset, right?

And and it would just drove my parents nuts.

Uh because my brothers like always tattling on me, and they wouldn't need it, like my parents were putting out the fires that I was causing.

I was provoking in a bad way.

But here the idea is look, no, no, provoke each other, poke each other to be loving and to do good works.

I don't like that.

Stay out of my business.

I just wanted, I just want it to be me and the Holy Spirit.

I don't want you to provoke me to like, why is that your business?

Is that how you feel when you read that?

You're judging me.

I don't want you provoking me to love in good works.

Like, I'm a good person.

Stay out of my business.

Right?

Yeah.

No, somehow, there's got it.

I'm sure this is tact.

I mean, we're not burning the bridge, but there's some permission here that we're a part of each other's life, and we're encouraging each other, and we're encouraging each other to be loving and to do good works.

Sometimes I don't like the Bible.

Right?

Because it says stuff like that.

But it's good.

It's good because followers of Jesus, there is this ability.

There is this ability, especially in Western Christians.

The way that kind of Christianity is done in America is very isolated.

It's kind of this, you know, pray a prayer and you're good.

You know, it's like you got fire insurance, right?

You you you you know, like, hey, I can point back, and I got baptized back at that time, and uh, and I'm good, you know, don't judge me.

Like, stay away, stay away from my business.

And yet, the picture of Christianity, this pastor is saying, no, don't give up, keep keep gathering together, don't neglect it.

Encourage each other to good works, and it's more and more.

Do you see that?

It's more and more.

It's more and more in light of the fact that the end is coming.

Or like the guy with the sandwich signs, the end is near.

The end is near.

So interesting.

It's so interesting to see just how this pastor is encouraging these Christians.

Having gone through so much technical material, he's asking for just this really engaged spirituality.

In closing, I just want to spend a little bit of time just contrasting some of the principles that we've talked about with just our culture, our secular culture.

We talked about this idea of a new and living way.

In our culture, there's a great deal about a self-made path.

That in order to live a meaningful life, you need to pursue individualism, self-reliance.

You know, John Wayne was, for some reason, John Wayne was such a character that um Americans kind of glommed onto.

And it's amazing how um American Christians really saw John Wayne kind of as an ideal, like this rugged individualism, a self-reliance, a cowboy spirit, kind of a um, and ready for conflict.

I'm gonna go and kill the enemy.

And it's amazing.

I don't know why that happened with American Christianity, but the way of Jesus is very different.

It's this dependence on Jesus' new and living way into the holiest of all.

It's not a path of being self-made, but it's a way that relies on Jesus.

It's not you do you, but it's a new and living way into the holiest of all.

Another kind of just contrast that comes up from this with our secular culture is the idea of boldness to enter the sanct the sanctuary versus the self-esteem movement.

Self-esteem is not bad, but it's difficult when you suck.

It's difficult to have self-esteem.

It's like you're trying, like when you're you don't have much to hold on to, and the more you do life you fail, but yet you know, like I need a level of confidence in my life.

It's just kind of like you're grabbing a hold of stuff.

The the world view of the Christian is the greatest basis for self-esteem because it says, look, I'm loved by God.

The God of the universe sent his son into the world to die on my behalf and to now establish in my life this boldness.

And so I am able to be honest with my, to establish a boldness.

Like so the self-esteem movement, it's scrambling for self-worth, a sense of self-worth, which is desperately important.

But what do you hold on to as you are honest with yourself?

The Bible allows you to be honest with yourself and your own personal failures, and yet have a great deal of confidence in your life.

The third thing here is this idea of drawing near to God versus self-actualization.

Again, a very secular idea.

Social media influencers often promoting a lifestyle centered around self-care, self-expression, self-fulfillment, whether it's through travel, fashion, or other forms of personal achievement.

It's this idea of self-actualization that I'm going to exert myself so much upon the world that I am all that much more real.

And yet the Bible says, no, we draw near to God and become our realist state.

We are made real because of our proximity to God.

We draw near to God, and we are therefore the most human that a human can be.

And the last is this idea of holding on to our confession versus societal conformity.

This passage tells us and calls us to be people of conviction, no matter what society says.

In the midst of a cancel culture where you have convictions, the Bible says, look, here is God's message about the world.

You can hold on to this, your confession of faith, no matter what the world says.

That's your confession of hope.

So the the this text in its three parts, drawing near, holding on to this confession, and then gathering together, provoking each other to love and good works, more and more until we see, until the end comes.

Not just Jesus as the concept, but Jesus the man who came as fully human, fully God, and he laid down his life for you and I.

So again, here's our pastor, the this pastor who wrote Hebrews, encouraging you and I to step into these spiritual realities in the face of all the things that threaten our spiritual vitality.

And I would commend those things to you this morning.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you for just the result of Jesus' death and resurrection, all that was accomplished strategically on our behalf, so that we can be near you, near one another, holding on to our confession of faith.

God, we ask that you would continue by your Holy Spirit to bear witness of these things in our life.

Thank you for just paying this penalty on our behalf with the cross.

It's striking and amazing, and we are grateful for it.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.