"What Faith Looks Like" - Hebrews 10:19-38

All right, if you've got a Bible, Hebrews chapter 10. If you don't have a Bible,

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

there's Bibles on the table.

It's going to be on page 1,108.

And also, if you don't have a Bible, take that Bible.

It's okay. If you feel like you're stealing, I'm going to give that away.

Like if you think that would be fun to do, I'm going to take that rush away.

You can just take that Bible home.

There's kids' Bibles in the back. If you want to take one of those, by all means.

Of course, it's Father's Day. And as I was getting ready for this sermon,

like I said earlier, we don't love to cover this much scripture at a time,

but as I kept reading through it,

what I realized over and over again is, man, this feels like a father giving

practical advice to a people that he loves and he's giving it in a paragraph.

And it would be hard to break that up.

Not that we couldn't, but I think it needs to be heard altogether.

And so we're going to move a little quicker than we might normally do.

But one thing you'll see is this is a great kind of example of how good fathers

discipline, how they encourage, right?

I know with my dad and I can't say enough good things about him,

but like my dad always started with encouragement, right?

You were always encouraged to make the right decision.

You know, hey, buddy, this would be a good idea. Or, hey, can you knock this

out for me? You know, there was always encouragement.

But when the encouragement didn't work, there was a warning.

Usually there was a warning because, hey, if you don't accept the encouragement,

then the consequences of your actions are going to be worse than the warning

that I'm even going to give you.

And then at the end, there was usually some sort of example.

And that's exactly the way that the writer of Hebrews does this.

Now, he spent the first 10 chapters up to this point giving them a ton of theology,

a ton of theology, right?

But the point of theology is not to be theoretical.

The point of theology is not to sit at home and know theology,

to know Greek words or Hebrew words that are no big words.

One of the words I always used to teach our youth kids was anthropomorphic.

If you don't know what that means, that's okay. But I used to always tell them,

if you get in a theological argument, just say, well, that's an anthropomorphism

and just walk away because nobody knows what that means.

And it's a good way for you to get out of it. Right. And of course,

occasionally if someone did know what it means, then they need to walk away

anyway, cause they're going to lose, but it's either here nor there.

But it oftentimes becomes theology is just a study of the Bible to try and understand

all these different things and hard things to get.

But the point of the writer of Hebrews was not to write them something that

was theoretical, that theoretically Jesus is a great high priest and theoretically

he's better than Moses and theoretically he's your great sacrifice.

No, he wants them to take the things he's saying and say, here's the practical

reason that that matters.

There's a reason that these big theological terms matter.

There's a reason that you can take a guy who's got nothing but his Bible,

and maybe he's kind of out in the middle of nowhere.

Think of like an old country church somewhere.

And he may be a better man of God than the professor who's been studying his Bible for 40 years.

The difference between those two men is simple. One of them just reads the Bible,

believes it, and tries to live it.

And the other one wants to understand everything and be the smartest guy in

the room and make sure that everyone knows that he knows his Bible better than everyone else does.

And again, the writer of Hebrews knows that. And so we come to a great turning

point in Hebrews where the writer turns from the explanation of the superiority

of the person and work of Christ to the application of it in the lives of this church,

this church that's facing persecution that's already faced persecution.

And so as we get in again, the layout here is he's going to encourage them,

he's going to warn them, and then he's going to remind them of an example.

So let's just read, and we're going to have a lot to read this morning.

Let me start by reading 19 through 25.

So he finishes the section above by saying, where there is forgiveness of these,

there is no longer any offering for sin. And so that's a great place to finish.

And he says one of the most wonderful words in the Bible, therefore,

I don't know how many times you've heard this example, right?

If you see a therefore, you need to see what it's there for.

It used to be like one of those things you would say, And people will be like,

oh, but now everyone's heard it so much. They're like, we get it. All right.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy

places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us

through the curtain, that is through the flesh, 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 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 is the habit of some, but encouraging one

another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

So he points out two things in the beginning.

Again, this is kind of a summary, but again, this is the practical application

of those things. Number one, encouraging them to say you have access to,

not encouraging them to say, hey, you might have access or you could have access.

He's speaking to them as believers.

If you're in here and you're a believer, you believe in Christ,

you trust in him, then I can just as confidently look at you and say,

listen, you have access to God.

You have access to him. It's not theoretical.

It's not the pastor gets to pray and he's a little closer. It's not,

well, you know, my grandma was a Christian for 60 years and I knew if she was

praying for me, that God was really hearing me.

The day that you become a believer, you have access to God, the exact same access

that everyone else who is a believer has.

Matthew 27, 51. After Jesus' crucifixion, it says, and behold,

the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom,

and the earth shook and the rocks were split.

The idea is there was this curtain that we've talked about in between the people

and the Holy of Holies, the people where God dwelt.

And only once a year could a priest go in there. And even when the priest went

in, they would tie a chain around his leg in case he had some sins that he hadn't atoned for.

Because if he went in there, he would drop dead and they would have to drag

him out. They couldn't even go in there to get it.

There was this separation between God's people and himself.

And the scripture says that it was torn from top to bottom. There's some significance there.

The priest didn't go in and say, well, this is no longer needed and I'm gonna

tear this from the bottom to the top. It was that God came down and tore it

from the top to the bottom.

He made a way for you to access him, not through a church, a priest,

or a pastor, or a baptism, or an aisle you walked, or a prayer you prayed. Christ did that.

Christ gains you access to the God of the Bible, to the God of Abraham and Isaac

and Jacob, to the God of Sinai, to the God of Genesis, to the God that brings the plagues.

All of these same things that you think of when you think of God,

you have access to him through Christ.

Not only do you have access, you have an advocate. You have an advocate.

So he says, listen, we have a great priest over the house of God.

Let us draw near with a true heart.

You have a priest. And so I think the best way to think about this in Exodus

28, which I told the kids this morning, our youth kids are going to be studying Exodus.

I'm excited about it for things like this.

Exodus 28, 21 through 22 says this.

This is a picture of what God wanted the priest to do when he would go into the Holy of Holies.

He says, there shall be 12 stones with their names, according to the names of

the sons of Israel, the tribes of Israel.

They shall be like signets or examples, right? Each engraved with its name for the 12 tribes.

And you shall set the two stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod as stones

of remembrance for the sons of Israel.

And Aaron, that's the first high priest, shall bear their names before the Lord

in his two shoulders for remembrance.

And so Aaron, as he would go into the Holy of Holies, would wear these stones

on himself that had the 12 tribes original,

God's people's names on there as an example of when I go before God right now,

when I go and place this sacrifice,

when I go and make this atonement, I'm making it on behalf of the people that

are etched on me, on behalf of the people of God.

I'm not making it on behalf of the Babylonians, or the Assyrians,

or the Egyptians. I'm making it on behalf of God's people.

And the writer of Hebrews says, just like that, Jesus, our ultimate advocate,

bears our names as he goes before the Father.

He doesn't just bear them on stones on his shoulders. He bears them in his heart, in his very being.

The Bible says over and over again, if you are in Christ, you are a new creation.

If you're in him, then Jesus comes before the Father with your name written

on him in blood and he advocates for you before him.

You have access, but you have an advocate.

So you have access and have these dual sources of what? Of confidence.

But when you come before the Father, it doesn't matter what kind of week you've

had, how bad things are or how good things are, what you feel like you've earned

or what you feel like you haven't earned, how well your attendance has been,

how well your Bible reading has been going?

Did you miss a few quiet times this week and you come before God and your first

thought is like, I'm such a failure. I can't believe I did that.

The writer of Hebrews, again, like a good father is saying, be encouraged.

Your access is not gained by anything you've done.

And your advocate is not waiting on you to do something that he knows you can't do.

I hope you see what kind of encouragement he's trying to offer to them,

that Jesus is, again, our access and our advocate, that his torn body and shed

blood provides those things to us.

There's a story of a guy named John Christostom from about the fifth century.

He's a, I think of him just as a pastor, bishop, and he goes before the Roman emperor.

And the Roman emperor is trying to threaten him. He's trying to get him to kind

of let his leadership lead his people away from this Christianity thing.

And hey, you're kind of causing problems.

You've heard this story in some way, shape, or form before, but this was his

exchange with the Roman emperor.

The Roman emperor says, I'm going to banish you from this world.

In other words, I'm going to kill you. And John Chrysostom says,

you cannot banish me, for this world is my father's house.

He says, but I will slay you, said the emperor. And he says, no, you cannot.

For my life is hidden with Christ in God.

He says, I will take away your treasures. He says, no, you cannot.

For my treasure is in heaven and my heart is there.

Emperor says, but I will drive you from man and you shall have no friend left.

And he says, no, you cannot, for I have a friend in heaven from whom you cannot separate me.

He says, I defy you for there is nothing you can do to hurt me.

That's what it looks like. That's what faith looks like when you're confident

in what Christ has done for you.

No one can take anything from you. No one can touch you.

There's nothing they can do because everything that you're putting all your

hope in stands before God in Christ Jesus.

His promises and his hopes are sure because of who he is and what he's done.

By the same token, if we believe that, if we trust that we have an advocate,

well, then we advocate for others.

When our cup is full and we're trusting in the Lord, that's why we come.

Again, we talked about this earlier, but this is why we're here.

And one of my greatest regrets when I did student ministry, looking back,

and I know character say the same thing, is we didn't do a great job of integrating

the student ministry with the church.

Now, there were reasons for that. And we had our reasons. And of course,

we justified them in any way we wanted to.

I don't want them to know these crazy people, whatever it was. I don't know.

We had reasons, but I think.

One of the reasons that you see our passion for kids ministry and student ministry

the way we do it here is I don't think my kids need a student ministry or a

kid's ministry more than they need a church.

They need a church. They need adults to get to know them and to love them and to encourage them.

Because I know there is coming a time when I will be the dumbest person they

know. I know it's coming.

I know it's coming. Right. I'm not ignorant to that because my dad's the smartest guy I know.

Everything he says sounds dumb when he says it because of his accent and the

way he talks, but he's always right.

And when I was 17, I couldn't think, if you were like, who's the most ignorant

person you know? I'd have been like, my dad. He knows nothing. He's an idiot.

He's a successful business owner. His house is great.

Everything's going well for him. He loves his wife, his kids.

And I'm like, what a dumb, this guy does not get it.

But it was at those times, it wasn't my youth group.

It was the adults in my church, a few adults that I could sit here and name

that came alongside me and did what this scripture was asking them to do and

said, hey, provoking a little bit to say like, hey, you're acting like an idiot.

Don't do that. And then when I would do the thing they asked me not to do,

they didn't go, what a big, dumb idiot.

They would invite me out to lunch and they would say, okay, you've made that

mistake. Now, what do we do? How can I help you get back on track here?

What can I do for you? That is what we need. And not just our kids,

not just our students. Everybody needs that.

And so if you're in here and you would say, man, I trust the Lord.

I truly believe he's my advocate. I truly believe he's given me access.

Again, I would encourage you, find someone to advocate for because you will need it one day.

You will need it one day when you forget, when you failed and everything's going

off the rails and your life is spiraling and you forget, because that's who we are.

We're a people that forget that what Christ has done and what he has done for

you and what he's offered to you, you will need someone around you to say, hey, don't forget.

Don't forget you're standing before god. It's not about you Your access to god

was not bought by you His advocacy for you does not depend on you.

He loves you and cares for you. Now. Let me stir you up to love and good works.

Again, the first thing this writer does is he encourages, wants to encourage

them in these wonderful truths.

But when encouragement doesn't work, he's not scared of a warning.

Again, just like every good father, he's not scared of a warning.

Verse 26, it says, for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth.

Now, real quick, before we even continue, just know this is only a sin capable

by church people, right?

He says, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, I say this all the time,

but it's easy to look out in the world and to look at what's going on in different

states, in different countries and go, what a bunch of heathens, right?

If they just were more like us, everything would be better.

And by like us, I mean Texans, more specifically East Texans,

right? We're just better. We're just better.

I'm not saying that to be true. I'm saying that because that's how we're raised.

But he wants them to know off the jump, this is not something that's just generalities.

It says, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

Well, what remains if there's no longer a sacrifice for your sins?

Verse 27, a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence

of two or three witnesses.

How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled

underfoot the Son of God, has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he

was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay.

And again, the Lord will judge his people.

One of the most famous verses in Hebrews, it is a fearful thing to fall into

the hands of a living God.

So what does this warning entail? Well, this warning is, first of all,

to a certain person, to a certain type of person.

The text is talking about deliberate, intentional, continual sin.

This word deliberately stands out because it's really, in the Greek,

it's like a double positive.

It's like he's doubling down on this. It needs to be deliberate.

The person persists in open rebellion against God and against his word.

The individual has, as he says, receive the knowledge of the truth.

The content of Christianity is truth.

He knows what God has done in Christ. He knows in his mind these truths.

He can quote the Romans road, right?

I've said before, he has the Awana Sparkies jersey with the jewels on it.

He knows what's right. They know what's right, but he intentionally and knowingly

rejects it and willfully continues in an unrepentant state of sin.

Again, this is the sin of church people. This is what that looks like.

But this is also why I wanted to read these together because don't miss the link that he's making.

He doesn't say this in a vacuum. He says this after he's just given them one

of the greatest encouragements you'll find in the New Testament.

Christ is your advocate and he's advocating for you. You should have hope and

you should encourage one another.

And it's as if he's saying, listen, if that doesn't work, if the encouragement

doesn't work, maybe the warning will.

We don't like warnings in churches most of the time.

It's a lot easier to talk about all of the good things that are in Scripture, and I agree with that.

But if you want to avoid that judgment, the easiest way to say,

how do I make sure that I never fall into that?

How do I make sure that I never fall into the hands of an angry God,

that anger at my sin, that I rightfully deserve this anger. How do I make sure that doesn't happen?

It's as if the writer says, read above, read above.

He doesn't give them a nine-step program to make sure that you don't fall into

the judgment. He doesn't give them something to do.

He gives them someone to trust because that's ultimately what's going on is

he's saying you can either trust yourself and your works and what you're capable

of doing or you can trust in Christ.

You can trust that God will let you into the veil of on your own righteousness

or you can trust that Christ has torn the veil.

You can carry your own name into the Holy of Holies and try to sacrifice your

own goats and bulls and life in front of God in hopes that he'll accept that.

Or you can trust your great high priest will carry your name into the presence

of God and advocate for you on your behalf.

It's not unlike if you had a kid that was constantly trying to run into the

street just over and over and over again, no matter what you said,

hey, buddy, don't do that. Hey, that car is bigger than you.

Hey, I know you're really fast, but it's faster than you, right?

And I know you're really strong, but it's stronger than you.

No matter what you did, they kept running.

It's as if you saw a dead squirrel in the road and you took your kid over there

and you said, do you want to look like this?

Is this what you want to look like? You don't look like this dead squirrel?

Now you may have to pay for counseling later, okay?

But counseling is better than some other things.

And I think because of our culture, we recoil at saying things like the writer

of Hebrews is saying, because we don't want to feel like, well,

you're just a fire and brimstone guy.

You're a Bible thumper. Why are you being so mean to me? Why would you say that to people?

To which I would say, I'm not saying anything that Jesus didn't say.

I don't have to yell and scream and point and sweat.

I don't have to pick it. I don't have to write things on signs.

I just have to read the words of Jesus. Listen, here's three things that Jesus said. Matthew 25, 41.

Then he, that's God, the judge, will say to those on the left,

depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Five verses later, then they will go away to eternal punishment,

but the righteous to eternal life.

Mark 9, 43. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell

where the fire never goes out.

Again, I don't have to scream. I don't have to yell.

That's just the words of Christ. I could have given you 20 examples of that.

It's not that it's fire and brimstone. It's that it is a fearful thing to fall

into the hands of a living God.

And if I would give my kid a stern warning and do everything I could to keep them out of the street,

how much more of a warning, how much more urgency should I have for the people

that I love to tell them it's a fearful thing to find yourself face to face

with the creator of the universe,

with sins not paid for by Christ.

Don't find yourself there. Don't do that. That doesn't mean I leave out the encouragement.

The writer of Hebrews doesn't do that. It just means I'm honest.

It just means like I wouldn't tell my kid, well, don't go in the street,

but if you do, I told you not to. I tried my hardest.

And then if they got hit by the car, what do I just throw up my hands and go

like, well, you know, I tried to tell him.

So I would go, did you do everything you could to warn him? And I'd go,

I mean, I told him it would hurt. I told him it was a bad idea.

You wouldn't accept that for me.

I think in the same way, when you read warnings like that, that's the tone that

the author is trying to set of, this is how serious it is. This is what's at stake.

It's fearful to fall into the hands of an angry God at your sin,

but he's just encouraged them.

Why wouldn't you just run into the open arms of Christ.

Why wouldn't you do that instead?

You don't have to worry about God's wrath poured out on you if you run into

the arms of the one who took the wrath for you.

You don't have to worry about paying for your own sins if you run into the arms

of the one who paid for your sins.

You don't have to worry about advocating for yourself and trying to convince

God that you deserve to be in his presence if you just run into the arms of

the one who's already gained access for you to his presence.

So he encourages them and he warns them. And the last thing he does,

again, like every good father, is he gives them an example.

He does two things. He says, remember the past, right? Remember the past and respond in the present.

Remember the past and respond in the present.

Wow. Let's finish reading this passage.

He says in verse 32, But recall the former days after you were enlightened.

You endured a hard struggle with suffering. Enlightened is another way to say

your eyes were opened. You were given a new heart. God saved you.

You endured a hard struggle with suffering, sometimes being publicly exposed

to reproach and affliction, 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.

35, therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward.

Let me just stop there because that's really the two things I want to talk about.

Again, what does he do first? He remembers the past. So in about 80,

49, 50, 48, somewhere in there, there's a famous quotation from a historian named Soutinius.

Soutinius indicates the character of the emperor Claudius's persecution against

Jews, but specifically Christian Jews.

Remember, the Romans had a deal with the Jews. They had worked out a way for them to live together.

You have your temple, you have some things that you can get to do,

but you're still under our control and what we say goes, but we're going to

let you keep your religion.

We're going to let you keep doing what you want to do as long as you pay us a bunch of taxes.

As long as you give us a bunch of money, you're good. It's amazing how that works.

Every time I've given somebody a bunch of money, They're pretty cool with what I want to do.

And so that's how this was supposed to work. But now all of a sudden,

some of these Jews are becoming Christians.

And now these Jews that aren't Christians and the Jews that are becoming Christians,

well, there's some infighting you can imagine.

Because these Jews that aren't becoming Christians are looking at the Jews that

are becoming Christians and they're starting to treat them like they treated Jesus.

Starting to treat them like they treated the disciples and going,

listen, why would you follow this Jesus guy? He's a heretic. He's a lunatic.

So this is the report that the historian gives. He said there were riots in

the Jewish quarter at the instigation of Christus.

That's Christ or the Christians.

He says, as a result, Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome.

So he kicks him out of Rome.

And again, it's easy to read that on a page, but this would be like if,

I mean, I've grown up in White House, Tyler, pretty much my whole life.

Lived in Dallas for three and a half years. But other than that, I've been here.

My family's here. My friends are here. All my favorite restaurants are here.

All my favorite places to go are here. I'm comfortable here.

I like living here. It's as if somebody were to say, listen,

you just can't be here. You got to get out of here.

Well, can I sell my house? No, that house is ours now. You don't get to sell your house.

Well, what about my stuff? No, you don't get to say, well, can I take some retirement

from my job? Maybe no, you just have to leave.

That's what goes on. So whoever the writer of Hebrews is writing to,

those are the people he has in mind, these people that have been displaced from

their homes, and they've already experienced a measure of persecution.

And he's trying to remind them, again, like a good dad would to say like,

hey, you've done this before. You know what this is like.

Just like, again, you would remind a kid, hey, remember when you were struggling with this?

Remember when you were going through this? Remember when you felt like your

world was falling down because of the homework or the test or the sport or the

chore that you thought for sure was going to cut your legs off or whatever it was.

But you remember you made it through that.

You survived that. You did that. He wants them, hey, remember that.

Say, look at what you've endured.

And more importantly, he wants them to look at how they endured.

How did they endure? It says, they had a better and lasting possession.

They believed Jesus's words. They had faith.

When Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth

and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourself treasures in heaven.

The Hebrews read that and said, he's right.

He's right. And I would rather be kicked out of my home and lose my house,

lose my money, lose my stuff and have to figure out a whole new way of living

on less money and less stuff. than not trust Jesus.

Once again, to remind them. And then secondly, he wants to encourage them to

respond in the presence with confidence, with confidence.

Again, he says in verse 35, therefore, do not throw away your confidence,

which has a great reward.

Back in the seventies, and some of y'all may know who this is,

but the Belinda's were a high-flying tightrope act. You may know who that was.

We got one. All right. Everyone else gets to learn something.

So the Belinda's were this high-flying tightrope act, And you might have seen

a video of people walking a tightrope in between really tall buildings or something like that.

That was probably a video of them. And there was a tragedy where the main,

we'll say the main guy, was doing a tightrope act and he fell about,

I think, 70-ish feet, maybe even taller than that.

And he passed away. And they were interviewing his wife.

And she said, you know, I knew something was up because he was acting so strange leading up to this.

Again, this is a guy who's done this hundreds of times.

It was not a big deal for him to do what he was about to do.

And they asked his wife, well, what was different? He said, well,

he just talked about falling all the time. He was so worried about falling.

He would go inspect the ropes and he would go install them himself.

And he would wake up at night dreaming about falling. And he said before,

all he ever cared about was focusing on doing what he was supposed to be doing,

walking the tightrope. He wasn't worried about falling.

I think the principle here is simple. when he says, set your hope on Christ,

right? Put your confidence there.

It's if all you do is run around and try and figure out how to not fall, be sure you will fall.

If all you do is look at all the bad things that could happen.

Imagine if all these Jewish Christians did was sit around and thought,

listen, if we do this, you know what we're gonna lose?

You know what this is gonna cost us? We've already lost our house.

We've already lost our stuff.

Now they're threatening to kill us. Now they're threatening to split up our

homes. I'm not threatening to put people in prison.

At what point do we cut bait and run and say, hey, listen, enough is enough?

Well, you only think that way if your eyes are on falling and not on Christ.

Again, he wants their confidence to be in something that's not them.

I love Acts 4.13, Peter and John before the Sanhedrin.

He says, they perceived that they were uneducated common men.

If you've ever been called uneducated and common, you're in good company. All right.

It says, but they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus and,

these people saw the boldness of Peter and John, that they were uneducated and

common men, and they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

Again, the temptation is to think that our own efforts is what should give us

confidence, but that's not what the Bible says.

The Bible says that your church attendance and theological acumen and whatever

you've accomplished in your spiritual Christian walk isn't where you gain confidence.

You gain confidence by looking at Christ and you do it with what? With endurance.

Let's finish reading and then we'll close. Verse 36, for you have need of endurance

so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.

He's going to quote from Habakkuk. He says, yet a little while and the coming

one will come and will not delay, but my righteous shall live by faith.

If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who

have faith and preserve their souls.

Again, God originally gave this to the prophet Habakkuk as he was repeatedly

complaining about the advances of injustice.

Habakkuk is looking at these evil pagan nations and how they seem to be prospering.

He's looking at the Assyrians and Babylonians and he's going,

why are they rich? Why do they get to live where they want and go where they want?

The equivalent of us looking and going, why is the guy who steals on his taxes

and takes advantage of people, why does he have nice cars? Why does he have a nice house?

Why does everything seem to go well for him? That's what Habakkuk is seeing.

And he's taking that before the Lord and he's saying again and again,

what is the point? Why is this a thing? Why are you allowing this to happen?

God's advice to him is simply this, listen, the righteous will live by faith.

In other words, Habakkuk, don't make the mistake of thinking that what you can

see on this earth, what you can perceive on this side of heaven is what really matters.

Righteousness, if you want to live righteously, you will live by faith,

not by looking at your neighbor's stuff, not by looking at someone else's things.

This obviously took root in Habakkuk because later in his writing in Habakkuk

3, 17 through 18, he says this,

though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are

no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will be joyful in God, my Savior.

When Habakkuk writes those words, he's looking forward to the first coming of Christ.

And he's saying, God will do what he said he will do.

God will send and deliver. He will send the one to crush Satan's head like he

said he would do in Genesis 3.

He will save his people. He will deliver them like Moses does in Exodus.

He will send a greater David to cut off Goliath's head and to rule and reign, or he will do it.

And he says, I will live by faith no matter what my eyes can see,

no matter what's not going well for me, no matter how things look,

I will rejoice in the Lord.

He says, I will be joyful in the God of my salvation, right?

I'll be joyful in the God that sends my savior.

Every injustice will be dealt with, every sin handled, every wound will be healed

and every single wrong will be made right.

That's what we trust in. And just think as we close, think about this little

church, this little church that the writer of Hebrews is writing to.

They've already been pretty shook up, right? They've been kicked out of Rome.

They've lost a lot of things.

That's what Claudius did. In less than 15 years after Claudius does that,

Emperor Nero is going to come along and his persecution is going to be tenfold what Claudius did.

This is where we get the crazy stories of them sowing Christians into the bellies

of animals and putting them in the arenas for people to watch them be mauled.

Putting them in wax and lighting them as a candle for Nero's temple, right?

This is where we get those kinds of stories. And the writer of Hebrews,

I don't know if he knows that that's coming.

I would say confidently that the Holy Spirit knows that's coming and he's inspiring

what's being written here.

And it's if he's preparing them. Listen, I know what you went through and that

was tough and you made it. what's coming is worse.

Trust in the Lord. Trust in the Lord. Be encouraged.

Be warned. And now be reminded.

Remember the past. Respond in the presence with confidence and persevering faith.

That's what faith looks like. So I wonder this morning, do you need to be encouraged?

I would say everybody in here would say yes to that.

Even the person who would be like, I don't need encouragement,

like I'm fine No you're not, no you're not If Peter and Paul And the writer

of Hebrews say you need encouragement I trust them more than I trust you You

could use some encouragement.

Maybe you need to hear the warning that the writer of Hebrews puts in front of us.

What happens when you know who Christ is in your head, but you refuse to trust him as Lord?

Maybe you just need to be reminded of where you've been and to be encouraged

for where you are going, right?

There's new battles to face. There's new things that'll happen.

Christ promises a lot of things. And one of the things he promises is that you will have troubles.

I pray that we're a church that takes this kind of approach to each other,

to encourage, to warn, and to remind, just like a good father would.

Let's pray. Father, again, thank you for this warning.

Thank you on this Father's Day. We can read a passage like this that you've

placed in front of us that's such a good picture,

of how a father might warn his child and how this pastor loves and cares for his people.

God, of course, more than anything, whether we have a father that we can go

talk to today or we've lost one or we never really had one.

The beauty of the gospel is that we've been adopted into your family,

that you are our father, that we call you father because you invite us into your presence.

You invite us to bring our cares and worries into your presence.

And God, you've loved us with an everlasting love, That you've sent our brother

Jesus Christ to make a way For us to have access to you And you've sent the

Spirit to empower us To live the lives that you've called us to live,

You aren't absentee You didn't give us some commands And say,

well go figure it out on your own No God, you've promised to be with us Every

step of the way, we thank you for that So now I pray, amen.