If you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10, the end of the chapter this evening, in Hebrews 10 verses 32 to the end. Tonight we consider the need for believers in Jesus to persevere in their faith in Jesus, our need to go on trusting Him and not to turn away, and how we do that, and with what confidence we can have as we do. So let me invite you to consider the subject of the perseverance of the saints from Hebrews chapter 10, and we'll pick up our reading here at verse 32. This is the holy and inspired Word of God.
But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, 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 abiding one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised, or, yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay.
But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith, and preserve their souls. Amen. This is the Word of God.
Let's look at Him in prayer. Father, we pray that You would write this Word on our hearts, and that by Your grace, by the work of the Spirit, You would lift Jesus before our eyes, that You would strengthen us in the grace that is in Jesus, give us strength to endure, strength to persevere, help us. We're weak without You, and Your power is made perfect in weakness. So make it so we ask for Your glory, and in Jesus' name I pray.
Amen. Well, let me give you the outline right at the front, because the writer says in the first place, we must persevere in faith. You see that right in the middle in verse 36. We have need, he says, of endurance, enduring in our faith in Christ, and it's needed, it's necessary.
But then he says, we will persevere in faith, verse 39. He says, we are not of those who shrink back. He has a confidence on behalf of these believers, confidence in God. And then he says, well, we might ask, what help do we have to persevere?
And that's what most of the passage is about. So I really want to take the passage out of order this evening and take it, first as the fact that we must persevere, secondly that we will persevere, and then all the helps that we have to do so. And so first, we must embrace the necessity of persevering, verse 36, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. We need to endure, he says, to keep on believing in Jesus, to keep on, then walking with Jesus, all the way home, till we're in heaven.
And there is no salvation without that, he says. That is, those who do not endure are those who commit what we call a apostasy. That is, they fall away. They fall away from Jesus.
They reject Jesus. And those who do not endure in trusting in Jesus, those who commit apostasy, well, we read one of the strongest warnings about that in all of scripture last week in Hebrews 10, 26 to 31. This strong warning concerning the vengeance of God on those who turn their back on the Son or trample him under foot. And so, insult the spirit of grace and profane the blood of the covenant.
It was a strong warning, don't reject the only Savior there is to turn your back on God the Savior Jesus, is to fall into the hands of the living God who is God our judge. But in his grace, he's provided a way of salvation. So, he urges us to go on in faith. He says, we need to endure, and this is the same language of Jesus say in Matthew 10, 22, the one who endures to the end will be safe.
The scripture says, we need to endure. And so, we're not called simply to sort of sit back, but press on in the Christian life and faith. The Puritan pastor, Thomas Watson says this, Christians do not arrive at perseverance when they sit still and do nothing. He does not with us as with passengers in a ship who are carried to the end of their voyage while they sit still in the ship or as it is with noblemen who have their rents brought in without their toil or labor.
But we arrive at salvation, that is, he means glorification, heaven. We arrive in the use of means as a man comes to the end of a race by running. We're in a race. Keep running the race that is set before you so that we understand that the same God who has ordained the end, we will go to heaven.
We trust in Jesus, has provided the means by which we will do so, continuing to trust in Jesus. The writers say, don't jump off the ship in the middle of the Pacific and expect to arrive safely, half the way around the world. The way to arrive at the end of your journey is to persist in the means of that journey to endure in faith in Christ. It's necessary, that's the first point.
Now the second is this, we are to be encouraged that true genuine saints do persevere in faith. And we see that in verse 39 because the author knows his audience and he knows the warning he's just given and he knows the fear that might strike in their hearts. And he knows that some of them will wonder, are you saying that? I, I who have been graced, Jesus who found me, the good shepherd, he's going to let me go.
And I'm not going to survive, I'm not going to persevere. And he says, no, no, no, don't draw the wrong conclusion here. Verse 39, we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but we are of those who have faith and preserve their souls. So he's got this confidence that these believers won't trample under foot the Son of God, won't insult the Spirit of grace, won't profane the blood of the covenant, and won't receive then judgment.
But we'll receive salvation. But he does want them to take that warning seriously from chapter 10 verses 26 and following because he knows in part, as we also take that warning seriously, because he knows in part that true saving faith not only rejoices in God's promises to us, but true saving faith actually trembles at God's warnings because we've come to believe God in his word. And it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But he follows up his warning about the fury of fire to quickly say, I don't mean you who are trusting in Jesus.
You're saved from that by Jesus. So don't jump ship. Don't abandon Christ. And so we see here that, once again, genuine Christians don't and actually can't lose ultimately lose salvation.
Genuine Christians do persevere in faith, and that's what he expects for them. Now, when we studied the parallel passage in Hebrew 6 verses 4 to 8, we said there were just a few major views on this whole idea of falling away and can you? There's just a few basic ideas. One popular view.
It basically says that once a person has made a decision for Christ or prayed the sinner's prayer or walk the aisle, once they professed, I believe in Christ, then well, this popular view says, no matter how they live, well, it doesn't matter how they live. In fact, they can live like the devil and be assured that they're going to heaven. It's a view that says basically you can actually be saved without any change of life at all. You can actually be saved by God and it makes no difference in your life.
That's a view that some Christians actually advocate. You'll sometimes hear this on TV. You'll hear preachers basically saying, if you made a decision for Christ sometime in the past and you profess that faith, well, then the rest of your life, you're certainly going to heaven, even if you've lived like the devil. That's somehow you can be saved without bearing fruit.
You can be saved without the Holy Spirit in you changing you. That's one view, but it doesn't hold up to the Bible. It doesn't hold up to the Bible. This sometimes called the once saved always saved view that, unfortunately, people take a very flippant view that have sinned.
We saw this in Hebrews, chapter 6, that's not according to Hebrews, chapter 6, 7, and 8, where it says, for the land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those who say it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to be encouraged and its end is to be burned. See, what he's saying is, this view that you can somehow be saved, that if seed has actually drunk in the rain that falls upon the earth, but it doesn't produce a crop at all, just thorns and thistles, well, it isn't true that you're saved. There's another view, and it's often associated with the Wesley's, the Wesley-Arminianism and the Holiness Movement.
It says that you can be a true Christian and then lose your salvation. The first view, you actually haven't become a true Christian. That's the problem. There's no fruit.
The second view says, no, you can actually become a true Christian, and then you can fully fall away and lose your salvation. Oftentimes you'll hear that you can also then be restored and you can come back. And there have been many of us, perhaps you've had friends who have the experience of falling away, and then they come back to the altar call and falling away, and then they rededicate their life, and falling away and so on and so forth. Maybe that's been our own experience at times.
I think most Christians have actually backslidden the seasons in their life and had their repentance renewed. But the view that would say that you actually lost salvation and then regained it. That's what we're talking about. That's not true either.
It's not the Bible's view. It's not the Bible's view that God is as faithful to you as you are to Him. The Bible's view is Jesus is far more faithful to you, always has been than always will be. Until glory, you're made perfect in faithfulness.
And so we find that Wesley in our minion view doesn't stand up to passages like Hebrews chapter 10 verse 39, where the writer having warned about people falling away, then assures believers they actually won't. The better view of Hebrews chapter 6 and Hebrews 10, 26 to 31 is that it's not about genuine Christians losing their salvation, but rather a false Christian falling away from their profession of faith in Christ. That's the Reformed view, a false Christian or someone who falsely claims to be a Christian. Then having professed that they believe in Jesus, fully and finally falling away from that.
And that happens too often in the Church of the Lord Jesus. We've perhaps all known friends who one time were among us in the body of Christ and have abandoned it. Now maybe the story isn't finished yet in their experience. We certainly pray it isn't finished yet.
But we do wonder and we do worry we have concern for their soul because they're not evidencing faith and they're not bearing fruit. They went out from us as 1 John chapter 2, 19, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that it might be complained that they all are not of us. They didn't continue the writer says and that's certainly the case for some.
They don't persevere is the point. But if you have faith in Christ, genuine faith in Christ, even weak, but sincere faith in Christ, you are preserved by God and you will endure to the end. That's what the writer is saying here verse 39. He says, you know, we have better things in mind for you, things that accompany salvation.
So that if you have salvation, you'll never lose it and if you lose it, you never had it. And before we move on to the rest of the passage, I wanted to pause here and help you see something that's really helpful in the Westminster Confession of Faith, our statement of doctrine. And it's in the chapter on the Perseverance of the Saints in the Westminster chapter 17. And many of you have the Red Hymnal before you.
And in the back of our Hymnal, we have actually the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed and the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. And if you'll look at page 858, just for a moment, bear with me here, 858, the chapter 17 on the Perseverance of the Saints. After in chapter 1, speaking of the fact that true believers can never totally, finally fall from grace. We might partially and temporarily, that is, backslide, but we never fully or finally do.
In paragraph 2 of chapter 17, it gives us reasons why. And notice this language. The Perseverance of the Saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father. Upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Christ, Jesus Christ, the abiding of the Spirit, and of the seed of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace, from all which arises also a certainty and infallibility thereof.
That's a mouthful. And I just want to walk you through the six or seven things he's saying here. This is such food for your soul to encourage you who believe in Jesus. First, he speaks to God's decree.
Why is it that true saints never fully and finally fall away, but do persevere to the end? Well, first, the Perseverance of the Saints, he says, depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election. That is, God shows us in Christ before the foundation of the world, says Ephesians chapter 1, that we should be holy and blameless before him. And what God has chosen, God will make sure happens.
God doesn't change his mind about choosing you. And having chosen you, you will, by the immutability, the unchangeable immutability of the decree of election, you will persevere. Secondly, he speaks of God's love. In other words, that election flows from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father.
Again, in Ephesians 1, we learn that in love, God predestined us for adoption. That is, his love is free. It's not based on something in us, and so it can't be lost by something discovered about us. We got to do everything about it.
When he set his love upon us, we didn't win his love as an action. As an act of our own will, we didn't win his love by the goodness of our works. We didn't win his love because we were smarter than other people, or more spiritual than other people. No, he loved us when we were his enemies.
And he loved us before the foundation of the world, and then we can't lose his love as an act of our own will. Because our salvation depends upon not only his decree of election, but the free and unchangeable nature of his love. But also thirdly upon, and that is the language of the confession upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ. Now this is what we've been talking about for months now in the book of Hebrews.
That Christ, who he is as our great high priest, and what he did in providing a perfect atonement for us is that what he did, he did perfectly well, powerfully and effectively accomplishing all that's needed for us to be everlastingly saved. And not only did he accomplish that in his death upon the cross, and then resurrection, but as we've seen time and again, he now always lives to intercede for us. He's constantly interceding for his people. He's looking out for us.
He's mediating the grace of God to us. And you don't think, do you, that his intercessions can be ultimately thwarted by the devil, or denied by the father? Do you? No, the father listens to his son.
The son is interceding for you. This is why you remember Peter. Though he failed, he did not fail fully and finally. He failed partially, right, and temporarily when he denied Christ three times to his face.
But why was Peter restored? Because Jesus said, even beforehand, Peter, I have prayed for you. I prayed for you. And so when you return, when you are restored, you don't encourage your brother.
So it depends upon God's decree, God's everlasting love, the effectiveness of Jesus Christ and his continued intercession for us, and then fourthly upon the abiding of the Holy Spirit the writer says. And here again, we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1, 13, and 14, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. And then fifthly, and another ground of our perseverance is the seed of God within us. That is we are new creatures in Christ, born of God, and the seed of the Word of God has come into our lives.
And it has been planted there. And it will bear fruit. And we will persevere. And then also, sixly because of the nature of the covenant of grace.
That is, as we saw in Jeremiah 32, as the writer points that out in Hebrews 8, God says, I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me. And so from God's side, from God's perspective, he holds unto us. That's the ground of our perseverance.
But from our side, we hold unto him. And the writer says, keep holding on to him. You need to keep holding on to him. And he says, you will continue.
It's because God enables us to do so. And we feel our need of that. We have days where we say to ourselves we're strong. We have days certainly where we know that we are weak.
But our high priest knows our weakness. And he sympathizes with us. And he's ready to help us. And so we can sing honestly with the homerider, O to grace, how great and dead are daily.
I'm constrained to be. Let your grace now like a fetter bind my wandering heart to the prone to wander. Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart.
Take and seal it. Seal it for your courts above. And so that's the difference between Peter and Judas, right? In the fear of man and cowardice, Peter denied Christ and said he didn't know him.
But in scorn for God and greed, Judas denied Christ and sold him out. One says Rick Phillips, one failed in his fidelity to Christ as Christians will and often do, while the other decisively repudiated him. One did not live up to the cross while the other despised it. And so Peter was restored because he never fully and finally rejected Jesus.
And Jesus held on to him. And Jesus interceded for him. But Judas was left to his treason because he fully and finally repudiated Jesus and fell into the hands of the living God. So do you want to be saved?
Do you want to be saved from what you deserve? Death and curse and judgment and hell? Believe in Jesus and go on believing in Jesus. That's what the writers say.
Now how do we persevere? How does this passage help us continue to persevere? I mean, God keeps us, but we have to persevere. How do we do so?
Well, the writer actually points us to three things that help us persevere. He says, recall your past, look to your future, and listen to the prophet. Where do we see that? Well, in the first place, in verse 32, he says, recall your past.
That is God's work of grace in you. That is verse 32. But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. So we say, remember what God's grace produced in you.
You were enlightened. You came to a knowledge of the truth. And having done so, you endured hard struggle with suffering. So he doesn't invite them to look back on the good old days when faith seemed easy.
It's not the easy times when everything's going well that really defined our Christian faith. But he looks back at the really significant times when life was hard and difficult, and there was trials and dangers and persecution, and the Lord saw them through. And they persevered in the past, and their faith grew. That's how to approach the future.
Remember the past. When God showed up for you, and God kept you. Of course, it's natural, you know, when we face difficulty and sickness and job loss and physical weakness and economic hardship, it's natural for us to get a tunnel vision looking at our circumstances and the difficulty of them. And think something terrible has occurred so badly that it's going to ruin us forever.
It's easy to be tempted to think that way. And in hard times, we fear our faith will fail, but God's word to us from what the Apostle Paul is my gracious, sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness. And he gives some examples the writer of Hebrews does. He gives some examples of the kinds of things they face, not as verse 33.
Recall the former days when you suffered how, while sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated for you had compassion on those in prison. And you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property. So some of these Hebrew Christians had been imprisoned. Those who remained free showed sympathy with them.
They probably visited them in prison, brought them food and clothing since the jails and that time didn't supply those things, but also put themselves at risk by showing up and identifying with those so imprisoned and helping them. Some of them lost their property. It was it was it was plundered either by corrupt officials taking it or by mobs stealing everything of value, destroying their homes and so on. And what did what does the writer say they did?
He says you endured. You didn't fall away when the heat was on. And so this is an evidence of the work of grace in you. And so recall then God's work of grace that preserved you even as perhaps you face hard things in the future or temptations to fall away.
No, the writer saying you're living your best life now. No, that's not the case for us. It's the Christian is not a life of ease and it's not a life without sorrow. Without mocking many of you have probably felt this in your own experience.
You may be the black sheep of your family. All your siblings think you're nuts. There are parties friends just have never invited you to because they know you're a Christian and they don't want you at that party. I mean, the forms of our persecution in fear the US thus far have typically been far more mild than what our brothers and sisters in places like North Korean, China, Iran and other places have been.
But all of us do our Christians. Well, why are we still here? You're still here believing Jesus. Why is that?
Because God has held on to you. Remember that. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5, bless our you.
When others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice, he says, be glad for your reward is great in heaven. So remember how God's grace bore fruit in your past. Also, look, he says not all not away from your past but look to the future.
God's promises to you. Why were they willing to endure their trials and still trust in Jesus? They knew verse 34, the writer says, for you had compassion on those in prison. You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had what?
A better possession and abiding one. They knew they had something that was theirs for the future. A better possession and abiding one. John Piper says the two things that everybody wants, they had found, but not in this world.
Everybody wants the best happiness possible and the longest happiness possible. That is what the words better and abiding point to. They had a better possession. They had the best possible happiness promised to them.
And they had abiding possession, the longest lasting possible, ever lastingly, so happy. And they had their happiness at God's side in glory where in his presence there is fullness of joy in it is right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. You have this promise. You have this future.
Let that pull you along as you endure trials or temptations to depart. When the Roman emperor valence threatened to kill the Christian bishop and church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, first he threatened with confiscation of all his goods and then torture and banishment and then even death, the courageous Christian Eusebius replied. He needs not fear confiscation who has nothing to lose nor banishment to whom heaven is his country nor torments when his body can be destroyed at one blow nor death, which is the only way to set him at liberty from sin and sorrow. You can take all my stuff but it's just the stuff of this world and all the things that matter I have are kept for me in heaven.
You can kill me, sure. I mean anybody can destroy my body with one blow but death will not win. It doesn't have the last word. In fact death would be my freedom from a world of sin and misery.
So you may lose everything in this life and yet lose nothing at all. No wonder they could joyfully suffer and endure. You've received verse 35 what is promised. William Tennil said, all that I do and suffer is but the way to the reward and not the deserving thereof.
Christ is Lord overall and whatsoever any man will have of God. He must have it freely given him for Christ's sake. Now to have heaven for mine own deserving is my own praise and not Christ's. For I cannot have it by favor and grace in Christ and by my own merits also for free giving and deserving cannot stand together.
He's pointing out that in all of this persevering we are meriting God's good gifts but we are receiving God's good gifts even the gift of persevering and God will crown his own gift with his free generous gifts and glory. So recall your past, your future and by way of closing listen to the prophet. Let the prophet remind you that you are not alone. And here he quotes the prophet in verse 37 and 38, a little while and the coming one will come and will not delay but my righteous one shall live by faith.
And if he shrinks back my soul has no pleasure in him. If you think God is calling you on the one hand the prophet is saying to something unique something no one has ever been called upon to do before. Well if you think you're that special you might grow arrogant and self-reliant and say I am special and who is the Lord anyway? Or you might grow obstinate and God rejected.
I mean why has God treated me like this. I mean nobody in the history of Christianity has ever been treated like this. Why am I being singled out? But the writer says what you need to see is actually dear Jewish Christians after the coming of fresh.
You need to say see that nothing new is happening to you. The prophet Habakkuk already spoke about this. This is the life of the believer. The righteous one will live by faith.
Don't drink that. Keep on going. Jesus is coming. Wait on him.
We don't know when he's coming. We don't know how quickly. We don't know how soon but he is coming. So go on.
And so the writer says you Hebrew Christians Christ having ascended and risen and left your side. You're in the same position as the Jews of old in this respect just as believers before the incarnation waited for the first coming of Jesus. So believers since the resurrection are waiting for the second coming of Jesus. We're trusting in a Messiah whom well we certainly and certainly some of these original peers had never seen with their own eyes physical eyes but just with the eyes of faith.
And what God is calling us to do is what he calls all of his people to do. To trust in this Savior until he comes again. That's going to be the point of chapter 11. We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.
So you too keep on running the race that was set before you. You're not alone. You're in good company. Keep looking to Jesus.
Let's pray. Father thank you. We're not alone. We're part of a body.
And we know that in walking with you there are hard things ahead before glory. Help us. Keep Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith before our eyes. In his name we pray.
Amen. Let's stand together and sing.