"Perfection Given, Progress Promised" - Hebrews 10:1-18

And eight. He throws a warning in there in the middle to not get dull of hearing.

And as he turns the corner, really into chapter nine and 10,

he's almost kind of going to summarize his arguments.

And so some of what you read in chapter 10, hopefully you're going,

I feel like I've read this before. I feel like I've heard this before.

That's because you have.

And that's because like every good preacher, he's going to repeat himself three

or four times to make sure that you get it.

And because he knows that somebody is going to come up to him one day and be

like, I don't think you ever said that.

He's like, no, I did. I said it in chapter two, chapter four,

chapter six, chapter nine. You weren't listening.

This is like the church announcement thing where you can announce it up here.

We can put it in a bulletin and no matter what you do, somebody will be like,

I didn't know that was happening.

You're like, the Lord didn't want you to know. That's all I can tell you.

It was sovereignly decreed before the foundation of the world that you would

forget that that was existing.

But that's what he's doing. He's wanting to kind of summarize his arguments

and he's going to take a shift halfway through chapter 10.

And we'll be in this section next week and get real practical to this specific group of people.

He'll start talking about specific things that they're going through,

specific issues that are going on in their church.

One of the most famous verses from the, towards the end of chapter 10 is,

it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God, right?

That's next week. Just wanted to prime the pump for you. Um.

But here he kind of summarizes again, his arguments that he's been making.

So if you've missed the go weeks or you've forgotten where we were,

you're in luck, right? Here's our summary.

I want to see, I want to show you three things that he's going to summarize here.

Number one, old Testament sacrifices don't work. They don't work.

Number two, Christ's sacrifice alone does work.

Number three, what does understanding those two things produce?

What does understanding those two things produce? Now, again,

what he wants to produce, what the author of Hebrews is wanting to produce is

a people who would look at themselves and go, whatever it costs for me to follow

Jesus, for me to obey him, I'm going to do.

If they came in here tomorrow and said, hey, if you don't renounce Jesus,

we're going to pull you away from your family and your wife and your kids.

We're going to put you in prison until you do that. The author of Hebrews is

trying to get across that your answer to that question should still be, yes, I will do that.

I will do that. I will trust the Lord in such a way that if that's what happened

to me, and that was a real thing that they were in danger of,

that he's going to take care of my wife and my kids because I'm going to honor him with this decision.

And then again, collectively, he's trying to write to a church and get them

to see, hey, you all need to be on the same page here.

This can't be a couple of radical people in your church that are going,

yeah, Jesus is worth everything.

And they're just trying to pull everybody along. Like, come on,

guys, we're going to do it.

This has to be a collective belief system in this church.

All right. Number one, why Old Testament sacrifices fail. Number one,

this is chapter 10, verses one through four.

Isaiah 10 · chapter mention

He says, for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come,

instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices

that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.

If you've been reading along in Hebrews, I commend you. I said early on,

this is a hard book to read.

I think really in terms of New Testament books, Hebrews may be one of the hardest

reads because it pulls so much from the Old Testament.

So it can be a lot. So I just wanted

to commend you for that and encourage you. You can do it. I promise.

I was reading a commentary early on. It said, there may be no other New Testament

book that's caused people to change Bible translations quicker than Hebrews.

It's like, you may start in the NASB, but the NLT starts looking real good.

At the end of this one, you're like, just make sense of this.

All right. Verse two, he says, otherwise, right? These sacrifices,

they would not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers,

having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins.

But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year,

for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

So it begins by saying these sacrifices that they're so caught up in,

they're shadows of good things.

They're shadows of good things. When me and Karith were dating in college,

I was in Dallas and she was in Tyler.

And because I was trying to get out so I could get married, and my parents'

rule at the time was, if you're in college and you get married,

we're not going to help you pay for college.

Well, I was at DBU, so I needed help. I needed help.

Looking back, I feel like that might have been a little bit of an empty threat,

but it worked. It worked on me.

I did not want to do that. And so I took about 60 hours in roughly a semester

and a half. And so I was, I was trying to get out.

Well, there was many terms. There was like week-long classes.

It was great. Amazingly, I still had free time.

It's weird how that works because now I feel like I don't have any.

I'm like, how did I do that and still go to medieval times twice a week? It doesn't matter.

But I'm in Dallas and Karis and Tyler, she's working and I'm working and I'm in school.

And so, um, at this point I had a BlackBerry.

I want you to know how professional I was in college. Okay.

But only BlackBerry, I had, you know, a couple pictures of Carrie and that was

all we didn't video chat.

We couldn't write, we didn't write letters because we're millennials and I don't

write letters, but not knocking them.

I should know how, I know how to write a letter, but we just didn't.

But I had a few pictures of her. And of course there were times where I would

just find myself looking at pictures of Kareth.

I mean, like, you know, what would be nice right now is just to go hang out

with Kareth, go on a date with her, go do something fun, or just sit around

and make fun of things that we like making fun of or whatever.

I don't know, just whatever I wanted to do, but I wanted to hang out with Kareth.

And so I would look at these pictures and you could imagine if I graduated from

school and we got married and we were about three or four months in our marriage.

And I went to Kareth and I said, you know, I don't know if this is working.

I kind of like just looking at pictures of you.

I'm imagining how, you can imagine how that would go. I'll let you think about

that for a minute. But, you know, I kind of like the idea of you.

I kind of like the idea of being with you. I like the idea of those things.

Now that I'm actually with you, this doesn't seem exactly like what I thought it would be.

Now, to be fair, anyone who's been married knows it's never exactly what you

thought it was going to be.

It's never that, right? Everyone gets married with a picture in their brain

of this is what marriage is going to be.

And whatever you thought it was going to be, it's rarely that exact same thing.

But it would be insanity for me to go back and say, you know,

how about we just do this?

How about I just move away again and you stay here and we'll just go back to

what we were doing? Because I just really like looking at pictures of you.

That's kind of what the writer of Hebrews is saying these Jews are trying to do.

He's saying all these things that y'all are so attached to and that you're not

wanting to relinquish are like shadows of better things, right?

They're shadows of better things.

The sacrifices and the temple and the tabernacle and the priesthood and all

of these things that you hold so dear, these are shadows of something that's better.

And he's trying again to get them to see it is insanity for you to try and hold

onto these things, because what you're going to actually lose out on is the

actual person of Jesus Christ.

You're going to miss out on God himself, a relationship with him,

knowing him, being a part of who he is, being a part of his family.

Again, we look at that and we go, well, yeah, that's really easy.

Of course, why wouldn't you want to do that?

But yet we've all been guilty of, and we all know somebody that in some way,

shape, or form looks at some tradition or some program or some way of doing Christianity.

And they look at that and you go, if we aren't going to do it that way,

then there's just no other way to do it.

This is how we do things. When I was young growing up, I just thought every

church did church the way that I did it.

I remember the first time I was at a church and they didn't have the stand up

and greet your neighbor time.

I remember that. And I remember thinking, going to my friend's church and thinking,

do they all hate each other here?

They must all hate each other here because there's no other reason that you

would not want to stand up, right? I just couldn't fathom how that could be a thing, you know?

And then I grew up and I was like, I will never do that.

I will never have that moment because I went to college, started visiting churches,

and that was my least favorite thing in the world. Now for you, you may love that.

You may want to shake everyone's hand. For me, I would be looking on the website

like, okay, church starts at 1015, so I'll get there at 1016, right?

Checking Google Maps for some back entrance. It's like, I just want to get in, listen, and get out.

I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying that's what I wanted to do.

But the point I'm making is I just thought that's how you did church.

There were certain things that you had to have if you were going to do church.

And growing up, if you didn't have those things and I went to your church,

I just assumed you just don't know the Lord. There's just no possible way.

And in a lot of ways, that's the same impulse that the writer of Hebrews is trying to draw out here.

He's trying to say, if you're so caught up in holding on to these traditions,

to these programs, to these way of doing things, if you're not careful,

you will miss out on the better thing,

on the thing that is Christ Jesus and him crucified,

buried, and risen again for your salvation. You will miss it.

It's why Jesus says things like he does famously. Many of you will say to me,

Lord, Lord, and I'll say, depart from me, I never knew you.

What does that mean? It means they were doing all the things.

They even say in there, didn't we cast out demons in your name, right?

Didn't we worship you? Didn't we go to church? Didn't we pray?

We were doing all of the things, Jesus. What do you mean you don't know us?

This is what it means to do that. This is like a commentary on Jesus's words.

It's as if Jesus is going to look at those people and he's going to say, no, you love shadows.

You love systems. You love programs. You loved all the things that you thought

made you acceptable before God, but you never loved me.

You love pictures of me and things that kind of look like me,

things that felt like me.

The problem is none of those things can perfect you, of course.

And how do you know that? Verse two tells us, well, you know,

those things can't perfect you because you have to keep doing them.

You have to keep doing it. Again, that's why we can get so tied up in the way

that we do things because we ascribe some sort of spiritual value to our means

and methods instead of who Christ is.

And so when we begin to lose those things or when those things get taken away

from us, we begin to feel like, oh my gosh, I'll never be close to God because I can't do that.

Because I don't sing that song. Because I don't go to that place.

Because that spiritual leader fell.

That pastor betrayed me, right? That church was mean to me.

Whatever it is, whatever thing it is,

we tie our spiritual health and our relationship to God to these things.

And when they fail us or when we can't keep doing them, our response is,

what am I going to do? Where am I going to go? What's going to happen?

These are the same thoughts that the Hebrews are having as the writer of Hebrews

is going, yeah, high priest, you don't need him anymore.

Temple, don't need him anymore. Tabernacle, he's out. Sacrifices,

no longer. Don't worry about it.

They're having a major spiritual crisis going, Well, then what do we do?

What do you mean we don't do those? It's all we know to do.

Verse four makes it clear where he says it's impossible for the blood of bulls

and goats to take away the sins of mankind.

Again, people looking for what to do, looking for a sacrifice,

just like the Jews would say, we're just going to keep sacrificing bulls and goats, right?

That's what they told us to do. That's what we're going to keep doing.

In the same way, you've got person after person going, I'm just going to try

and be a good person. I'm going to try and be nicer.

I'm going to try and talk nicer. I'm going to try and be nice to my kids.

I'm going to try and be nicer at work. I'm going to try to read my Bible more.

I'm going to try and pray more.

I'm going to go to church more. I'm going to get involved more. I'm going to do more.

And you're just waiting on someone to tell you, can you just tell me what to do, right?

What version of bulls and goats do I need to sacrifice for God to like me?

And Hebrews 4 says, never going to work.

It's never going to work. You can go to church every single day.

You can pray every single day. You can read your Bible every single day.

You can do everything you want to do.

And he says, listen, sacrifices like that will never pay for your sins.

Your debt will never be paid.

Any sacrifice or work that we

try and put in front of the Lord will fail because it is tainted with sin.

This is why verses like Psalm 62 verse 1 are so beautiful. For God alone,

Psalms 62:1

my soul waits in silence.

From him comes my salvation.

For the Christian, Christ alone is our hope and confidence, not what we do or

where we go or what programs we're a part of or what systems we're a part of.

I would even add to that even how you feel. It doesn't matter how you feel.

Now, I'm not saying it doesn't matter in the sense that I don't care about how

you feel. If you feel a certain way, I would love to know.

What I mean is on your worst day, when you wake up and you feel like you have

failed in every single way and your life is completely falling apart and there's

nothing that you look at and go, I mean, I'm doing absolutely nothing right.

Your feelings condemn you.

But if Christ doesn't, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. 1 John 4, verse 10, And this is love, not that we have loved

1 John 4:10

God, but that He has loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation.

Or you could say, sent His Son to be a sacrifice for our sins.

Why do our sacrifices fail again? Because all of them are tainted by sin.

In some way, shape, or form, none of us are perfect.

Nothing we bring to God will pay our debts before Him. It is in Christ alone that we find that.

So that's why the sacrifices don't work. number two, why does Christ's sacrifice

succeed? Why does it work?

He's going to quote from Psalm 40 verses 60 right here, but he says in verse

five, consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,

but a body you have prepared for me and burnt offerings and sin offerings.

You have taken no pleasure.

Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of

me in the scroll of the book.

So again, he's quoting from Psalm 40, and it's interesting how this is written.

It's almost as like we get a picture of this eternal conversation that takes

place between God the Father and God the Son.

It's a really interesting way of applying this Old Testament scripture.

Of course, David writes Psalm 40, but we know that David may have penned it,

but the Holy Spirit wrote it.

The Holy Spirit writes it and Christ speaks it to God the Father.

That's kind of how this is written, right?

I mean, again, he says, when Christ came into the world, he said,

he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired.

I'll be honest, this is a weird moment in time. Of course, if you're a Hebrew,

you're going, what do you mean

sacrifices and offerings you have not desired? Have you read Exodus 24?

It's like, did the same God who wrote Exodus 24 write Psalm 40?

Because it seems like the God in Exodus 24 really wants these sacrifices.

It seems like the God who wrote Leviticus really wants these sacrifices and these offerings.

He lays out in incredible detail how they're supposed to offer up these things,

how they're supposed to go about it, who's supposed to do it,

how they're supposed to prepare it, what they're supposed to do after they do it.

Only to say later, well, I don't desire those things. I don't want those things.

It would be like me telling one of my kids to clean their room.

They go in there and clean their room. They come out. They go,

hey, Dad, I cleaned my room. I'm going, I didn't really care if you did that.

That's what it feels like when you read something like that.

But I think there's a distinction that's made here between what God has given

them to do and what he desires of them.

That these sacrifices were placeholders. They were reminders.

They weren't what he wanted from them, but they were things that he could give

them to do to remind them that they could never give him what he wanted,

that they could never live up to the standard that he wanted.

And this is all throughout the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 15, 22,

when Samuel is pronouncing to Saul that God has taken the kingship away from

him and he's going to give it to David.

Samuel says to Saul, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices

as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

Behold, it is better to obey is better than to sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams.

What God desires, what he wants from his people is willing obedience. He wants trust.

He wants his people to look at him and go, you're the God that delivered us out of Egypt.

Right you're the god that saved us from slavery you're

the god that brought us from death to life you're the

one who's done that and we trust you lord we're going to obey you we're

going to do what you ask us to do that's what god desires

but because the people are incapable of doing that what he gives them is reminders

reminders these sacrifices again are reminders we said two weeks ago sin brings

death sin brings death sin brings death one more example i think that's important Jordan,

famously, you're at Micah 6.8. You've heard this verse, I promise you.

Micah 6.8 says, He has told you, O man, what is good?

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and

to walk humbly with your God?

You've heard that verse, I would imagine at some point in time.

This is how that, this is the two verses before that one.

It says, With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on

high? So Micah is asking this question, if I'm going to come to the Lord, what do I need to bring?

What do I need to do to come before God?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with 10,000 rivers of oils?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

Micah, of course, is being a bit rhetorical But what he's trying to get his

readers to understand Is what could I possibly bring to God That would rid myself of this sin,

even says, what if I gave my firstborn?

What if I gave my firstborn the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

None of that would work. And so, of course, that's where we get verse eight.

What does the Lord require of you?

To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your guides.

Well, what's the problem with that?

Now we've got our to-do list. Why don't we just do that? The problem is we can't do it.

Again, that's what this is all about. That's what the writer of Hebrews and

the writer of every Old Testament book,

the writer of every New Testament book is trying to get people to see as you

cannot on your own pay the debt that you owe to God because of your sin. You cannot do it.

Now, when Micah says, shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

I think he unknowingly, but God, of course, knowingly is saying,

well, you don't give your firstborn, but I give mine. That's what God does.

Instead of us having to give our firstborn for the sins of our souls,

God gives his only begotten son for the sins of our souls.

Because his only begotten son is the only one that meets the requirement for the sacrifices needed.

Christ's response, God's response is what? What is God's response to our problem

that we cannot in our bodies bring him a sacrifice or make a sacrifice or even

be sacrificed to pay for our sins, what does he say?

You have prepared a body for me.

Christ says, you have prepared a body for me, a body prepared for God to dwell

among men, a body tailor-made to be the perfect sacrifice for sin.

Again, what do they say when Jesus is born?

What does John say when Jesus approaches him?

Born to take away the sins of the world. He says later in this quotation,

he says, I have come to do your will, O God.

So the body that is given is indwelt by the Son and given over to the Father's will.

Here's a question. What was the Father's will for this God-indwelt body?

What was the Father's will for his Son?

Isaiah 53.10 says, yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

So let's put all that together.

What did God do in response to the fact that nobody ever anywhere could give

a sacrifice pleasing to him to pay for the sins of his people?

What was God's response?

God's response was, I made a body. I made a body.

Son's response was, I will do your will. I will do your will.

What was the father's will for that God and dwelt body was to crush him.

What was the son's response to the father's will being to crush him?

Not your will, but mine be done, or but yours be done. Not my will, but yours be done.

This is the plan from eternity past. Conversations happening again from one

God eternal, two persons in the Godhead having this conversation. What are we going to do?

How are we going to be most glorified? How are people going to be saved?

What's going to happen when these people sin?

Happening, again, outside of time and space.

And the answer is they will sin and deserve death.

So you, you will go and be given a body, Christ says, and I will be crushed

and they will be made whole.

These verses make clear what sets Christ apart as a perfect sacrifice for our

sin. And it's two words, sinless submission.

Sinless in that he always did the will of the Father.

Submission in that he did it willingly. If you ever read through the gospel

of Luke, Luke 9.51 says, when the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up.

In other words, when the days drew near for Jesus to be crucified and buried,

it says he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

But Jesus never begrudgingly said, oh man, he wasn't Jonah. He didn't run from Nineveh.

He wasn't David. He didn't get caught up in what this world had to offer him.

Wasn't Moses. He didn't get angry at the Lord when he didn't provide the way

he wanted him to and strike a rock.

He was better than all of those things. And Christ's sacrifice fulfilled what

God required, perfect, sinless, willful obedience.

That is why Christ's sacrifice alone is able to save.

All right, let's close here. So we've looked at why Old Testament sacrifices

don't work. We've looked at why Christ's sacrifice does work.

Well, what does Christ's sacrifice produce? What does it produce?

Let's start in verse 11. It says, and every priest stands daily at his service,

offering repeatedly the same sacrifice, which can never take away sins.

We talked about this at length a couple of weeks ago, but one of these reminders

to the people that the high priest was at the end all be all is that they were always working.

They were always going in and out. They were always sacrificing.

Verse 12, but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins,

he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies

should be made a footstool for his feet.

For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

I want to zero in on verse 14. Again, he says, for by a single offering,

he has perfected for all time, those who are being sanctified.

So perfected for all time, perfected for all time. This is a perfection that

is given, it is not earned.

Perfection that is given to you, it's not owed to you, right?

No one ever gets to go to God and say, all right, I've done everything, I've done my part.

No one ever gets to go to God and say, have you seen how hard my life has been? I think I deserve it.

If God's going to give you perfection, if he's going to justify you and cleanse

you, he does that purely out of his grace and mercy.

And it is given to you the same way a father would give his child anything.

He dies the death you and I should have died and lives to give you the life

that you and I don't deserve.

Promised to you. This is what Colossians 1, 21 through 22 says,

and you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.

I always love when the authors are honest about people's condition.

What was it like for you? You got saved. I was alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.

It's like, hey, it says, Christ has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.

In other words, he's brought alienated people back together with God himself

in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

In order to present you perfect before God, that is what Christ's sacrifice

entails. That's what it accomplishes.

What it means for us is, hey, no more sacrificing, no more performing,

no more acting, no more coming to church or reading your Bible or praying so

that Christ might make you perfect,

so that God might look down one day and say, okay, now you've done enough.

Now you can know that your sins are forgiven.

To the Hebrews that he's writing to, he's almost saying, listen,

aren't you tired of sacrificing bulls and goats and your conscience still never being clean?

To you and me, he would say, aren't you tired of doing all these spiritual things

and never feeling forgiven?

Aren't you tired of only feeling close to God when you feel like you've gotten everything right?

Aren't you tired of only feeling close to God when you cry during worship?

Aren't you tired of only feeling close to God when you take communion?

Aren't you tired of only feeling close to God when you go to church,

when you read your Bible, when you pray, when you feel like you've done a good

deed? Aren't you tired of those things?

What he's saying. Your sins can be holy and completely forgiven.

You can be made perfect and righteous and justified before God because Christ has paid your debts.

Not because you have done anything.

Not because you have earned anything.

Not because you've been catechized. Not because you went to VBS.

Not because you were in Awanas or RAs, GAs, whatever your chosen choice of children's

church was, none of those things

have earned you anything, but Christ's sacrifice has made you perfect.

But who has he made perfect? He says that he's perfected for all time those

who are being sanctified.

Hold on a minute. If I'm perfect, if I've been made perfect,

why do I need to be sanctified?

If I go and I see something perfect, my response is rarely, man, that thing is perfect.

It needs some work done, right? How does that work?

That thing looks absolutely false. There is nothing wrong with it,

but I think I can help out a little bit.

You are perfect in the sense that when you stand before God, he sees you in Christ.

That when he looks at you, when he considers you, he does not see you.

He sees the perfection of his son that's been given to you.

Certainly your perfection has been given and promised and guaranteed.

But to those who he's given perfection in heaven before him,

progress on earth will follow.

Progress is always going to follow.

Your sanctification is going to happen.

When you get saved, there's this idea that, man, you may get saved and you may

go 30 years without caring anything about the Lord.

That is a very foreign idea to the scriptures.

I've used this example before. I think it's pertinent. Again,

I've been to, I don't know, well over 100 funerals in the last 10 years.

I've never been to one where that person wasn't saved and going to heaven, ever.

Now, statistically, that seems impossible. And I'm certainly not going to be

the arbitrator of who's in and who's out. That's way above my pay grade.

What I mean is we have created a spiritual system in which it doesn't matter

how you live as long as you've made one decision at one point in time somewhere along the way.

Specific example, it always stands out in my mind. Happened four or five years ago.

We had a painter that was trying to get high on a job site and passed out and never woke up.

And we go to his funeral and this guy's probably early 50s and lived a life

of debauchery and all kinds of crazy things in and out of prison.

Again, I'm not at all disparaging someone that's gone through those things,

just telling you what this guy's life was like.

And we're about halfway through the service and they're making the case for

how great this guy was and how wonderful he was.

And they say, you know, we know that I'm not going to use his name.

We know that so-and-so is in heaven because of this letter right here.

And they pull out a letter from when he was nine years old.

He went to a church camp and he wrote back to his mom, mom, I got saved tonight.

Now, again, I'm not telling you where that guy is. I have no idea. I have no clue.

What I'm telling you is the Bible gives you no assurance if that's what you're holding on to.

If what you hold on to is I did this thing one time in one place,

there's major issues with that.

To know God is to love him and to love God is to obey him. It's to be changed.

It's to be progressing. It's to be moving towards what God would have you.

And I think the easiest way to think about this is, thinking about our church

and churches around us is the difference between a hospital and hospice.

Now you've heard the phrase churches are hospitals. And I'm not saying that that's not true.

I think there is some true applications that churches are hospitals.

I just think most of them act like hospices.

What I mean by that is the point of going to a hospital is to be cured.

It's to be made better. It's to fix the ailments that are going on.

And certainly Jesus is called the great physician in the gospels.

And that's true. Well, if that's true, then we should be getting better.

If we know the greatest physician, if we know the eternal physician,

If we know the physician whose care is perfect,

who's never lost a patient, whose prescriptions work 100% of the time,

whose rehab plans always work, there should be an expectation in our lives that

we're progressing, that we're growing towards Christ.

Does that mean there won't be setbacks? Of course not.

Does that mean you won't sin? Of course not. Does that mean you won't have seasons

in your life where you go, man, if I'm saved, that's a miracle in and of itself.

Good news. It is a miracle in and of itself. It was a miracle the day it happened,

It was a miracle that on your best day It's a miracle on your worst day.

Churches certainly are hospitals, because each of us has a responsibility to

one another to say, hey, how can I help you become more like Christ?

How can I help you with whatever's ailing you? How can I help you with whatever

sin is in your life? How can I help you grow in the word? How can I help you pray?

How can I help you love Jesus more? That's the goal of churches.

And so when I say certain churches are like hospice care, what I mean is,

so many churches turn into, how can I keep you as comfortable as possible until you die.

I just want to make you feel good.

I want to give you the medications that I can so that you're painless.

I want to make you as comfortable as I can so that you don't have to worry about how hard life is.

I don't want to talk about your problems. I don't want to talk about your sins.

I don't want to talk about what's going on.

I don't want to talk about how you could get better because what's the point

in that? We're all going to die anyway.

So can I just make you comfortable on the way there?

Those are two very different approaches to church. And when I say church,

I don't mean the building, I mean the people.

And I believe what the writer of Hebrews here in verse 14 is really trying to

get them to see is, listen,

you have been made perfect and you have the guarantee, the promise that you

will progress in the faith, that you will grow, that you will know Christ better,

that you will grow in holiness.

You will grow in love. You will grow in sanctification.

It's a promise to you. So live that way.

Don't just try and, again, find hospice care.

The truth is that's super, I don't know, tantalizing to me. I kind of like the idea of hospice care.

I like the idea of going to a place that's just going to keep me comfortable,

that's going to give me the drugs that make me feel the best.

It's going to allow me to only talk about all the good stories of my life,

all the wonderful things that have happened, right?

All the good things that went on, all the cool stories of my life.

I've never been in a hospice situation where somebody has come in and said,

all right, you got to get up and do some rehab.

All right, it's time to start walking again. All right, it's time to get up

out of that bed and move forward, right? That's not the point of hospice.

But I've been in plenty of hospital rooms where the doctor walks in and says,

hey, this is going to hurt really bad.

Hey, you've got weeks of rehab ahead of you. Hey, this chemo,

it's going to do a number on your body.

We need to do so that you can live. It's what we need to do so that you can

progress. It's what we need to do so that things can get better.

And again, the beautiful thing about our physician is he has a hundred percent success rate.

If you'll trust him, you'll trust his process. I'm not saying it won't be painful.

I'm not saying he won't rip open wounds that you don't want to be ripped open,

that he won't cause you to deal with sins that you don't want to deal with,

that he might cause you and we'll say, encourage you to serve in ways that make

you feel uncomfortable.

To get out of your comfort zone. Of course, he'll do all of those things,

but his diagnosis is flawless and he has never lost a patient to death.

Do you want to live? Trust Christ.

So the Old Testament sacrifices were incomplete, unable to do what God needed.

Christ's sacrifice alone is able to do that. He is able to save you to the uttermost.

He is able to cleanse your sins. He is able to bring you to God perfect and blameless.

But if he has done that, my prayer is that you would commit to trusting him,

to not trusting in the sacrifices, the things that you do, or the things that

you can do with your hands, your eyes, your feet, but that you would trust in

Christ and say, God, I want to be more like your son. What's the prescription?

What's my treatment plan? What kind of rehab do I need? What sins do I need to confess?

What things do I need to cut out of my life? What things I need to put into

my life, not because they bring me to you, but because I've been brought to

you and I trust you. All right, let's pray.

Father, as always, again, thank you for this church. Thank you for these people in this room.

God, thank you for your word. Thank you that even the passage we read today,

it says that the Holy Spirit testifies to these things and then quotes scripture

that we can know when we read our Bibles,

God, that you are speaking, that you are actively speaking.

You are alive and you are moving within us even now.

This isn't a book written by a dead man, but that every word is profitable for us.

I pray that this would be a church that is a hospital, not a hospice.

That our concern for one another is not that we might make each other as comfortable

as possible as we head towards eternity,

but that our concern for one another would be that we would love and care for

each other in such a way that we want to see each other become more like Christ.

We want to be helpful. We want to be encouraging. God, sometimes that means

that we need to go through things that are hurting.

We need to go through things that are painful.

God, we know that we can trust you, that on the other side of that,

you love us and you care for us.

And you will bring us home. You will sanctify us. You have promise to do it. Now I pray. Amen.