If you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Hebrews, chapter 6. This evening we're in verses 9 through 12. What we've seen of late the last couple of weeks is that, well, the author prodded them in light of their spiritual immaturity, prodding them on to maturity, but he also warned them about the danger of apostasy, the danger of fully and finally falling away. And now, having spoken of that, he comforts them.
He reassures them of their salvation and his better hopes and his confidence in the Lord for them. And so it's a reminder about the issue of assurance. We, especially in reading Hebrews, can have our assurance shaken. There are passages that do that.
But the point of the book is to reassure us by bringing us back into dependency on Jesus for our salvation and to know that we have every reason for confidence in him. And so we want to think about the subject of assurance of salvation tonight from Hebrews chapter 6 verses 9 through 12. Let me invite you to give your attention to God's holy and inspired word. So we speak in this way, yet in your case beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation.
For God is not unjust, so as to overlook your work and the love that you've shown for his name in serving the saints as you still do, and we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Amen. This is God's word, and then you write it down to the hearts, let's look in the prayer. And Father, we do ask that by the Spirit of God, this word of yours would come home to our hearts, and it would build us up in Jesus' name I pray.
Amen. Thomas Watson, you'll hear it said, once was walking behind a father and son, and the father picked up his son, and it hugged him and said, I love you son, and the son replied while in his arms, I love you too. Now was the son at that moment he was in his dad's arms legally any more his son? Well, no, of course not.
But was the son experientially more his son? I think we'd say yes. That is, it's the difference between being a son and being convinced of it, of being loved and being persuaded of it. And so it is with salvation and assurance of salvation.
It's one thing to be safe, which is fantastic. But it's another thing to be certain that you are and always will be safe, that you're safe in the arms of your Savior. And assurance is about that kind of confidence. Your full assurance of salvation is possible, the writer here says, and it should be a pastoral and a personal priority, the writer says, and having this assurance actually produces perseverance.
Those are the three things I want you to see tonight from the passage. First, that your full assurance of salvation is in fact possible. So notice as a topic here in verse 11, he speaks and says, we desire each one of you to share the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end. He speaks of a full assurance of hope.
Christians have been brought out of hopelessness and into hope. And we live in a culture, however, that often feels hopeless. Many people feel like there is no future for them. This world doesn't hold out any great hopes.
But Christianity is nothing if not hopeful. And this kind of hope, the Bible speaking of, is not wishful thinking. Which is often how we think of hope. We put our hopes in something in the future, and really it's just something we wish for, but don't know for sure that we have.
But hope in the Bible is different. Hope is being certain of and eagerly waiting for. That which is certain. It's like knowing your spouse or your parent bought you a Christmas gift.
Well, because you've been told about it, or you've seen the pictures of it, or well you were on Amazon too, and there it was, in the inbox, or the whatever. And you saw the expanse, a charge for the credit card, and now you see it wrapped under the tree, but you're still waiting for Christmas before you can open it. It takes patience, but it's yours. And then it will soon be unwrapped in your hands.
That's the hope of salvation. There is pardon now, which we can enjoy the knowledge of. But there is everlasting life in the presence of God face to face, held out to us, and it is certainly ours. We're waiting in, well, hopefully even our expectation for that.
So why here speak? Why does the author speak of the fullness of hope? Well, he doesn't want to leave them anxious, and he doesn't want them to feel unstable in their Christian life. He doesn't want them to be insecure about their relationship with the heavenly Father, and uncertain of his relationship, and well, insecurity is a common thing.
There are all kinds of reasons for insecurity when, well, the story is written that when Abraham Lincoln died, this is what they found in his pockets. Two pairs of spectacles, and a lens polisher, a pocket knife, a watch fob, a linen hanker shift, and a brown leather wallet containing a $5 confederate vote, probably a souvenir, and nine newspaper clippings. And the clippings were from the papers printed immediately before his death, and each contained complimentary remarks about him. Now says the Library of Congress's Rare Books and Special Collections Division Chief quote, "...they were less proof of a president's ego than of a man who needed reassurance." Well, it's generally true as well of Christians.
We tend to feel insecure in our relationship with God. We need assurance from him that he does and will always love and accept us. And even the greats in the Christian world have struggled with this in their own experience, the great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, who did so much to help assure others of the confidence we can have in Christ. He says, in sometimes doubting his salvation, he says, I feel like a waiter at a table feeding thousands, but not tasting it myself.
It can be like that in the Christian experience. It's not surprising if you've experienced times like that or if you're in a season of personal doubt and insecurity. I mean, the devil is against us, and he's always accusing us. And well, sometimes he's exactly right about his accusations.
And our conscience accuses us, alternately excusing us or assuring us, but also at times condemning us. Of course, we give infotentation. Our trust in Jesus is weak. We can sinfully feel like Jesus is as fickle towards us as we are fickle towards him.
And I say, sinfully feel that way because he's not fickle. But we can feel that way. And there are various views on the market about assurance. And I want to walk you through those and then I want to get back into the nuts and bolts of the passage for sure.
But in light of this topic of assurance, it might be helpful to reflect that while the Roman Catholic Church teaches that confident assurance of salvation is not available to Christians. The best we can have is conjecture. That is, you can be probably persuaded that you are going to be saved in the end, but you can't be certain that you will be saved in the end. And when you live under that kind of teaching, you may find, and we have often seen many very sincere believers in Jesus who nevertheless live in fear or who are motivated by guilt because they don't know what the next day will hold with regard to their salvation.
If I can't know that Jesus freely pardons all my sins and certainly takes me to heaven as a gift, I can easily become open to the suggestion that, well, I need to have, besides faith in Jesus, something else to secure me, my prayers, my penance, or perhaps the merits of saints or martyrs added to me for righteousness. And once you start adding things to what Jesus did for you, where does it end? There is no end to it. There is always the lingering sense that there must be just a little bit more that could be done if I am to truly be right with God now and forever.
We have something better in the gospel. Well, that's one position. There is the Wesleyan, or minion view of assurance, which is tied to their view of seeing that genuine Christians can fall away and be lost. We talked about that last week.
There are folks who believe that it's possible to be a true genuine Christian and then ultimately to fully and finally fall away. And if that's the case, then you can't have assurance. You will certainly be saved in the end. You may be certain you are a child of God in this view now and bound for glory, but that could change in the future, under this kind of view.
I can leave people with a sense of dread for what tomorrow may bring. But the point of Hebrews is that his people are safe in Jesus and can be assured. And so the reform view, by contrast, teaches it is possible to be certain that you are a beloved child of the heavenly Father, certainly pardoned and bound for heaven through faith in the finished work of Christ who holds on to you more strongly than you hold on to Him. And this is everywhere in the Bible.
We just highlight some places where we see this elsewhere as well. The Apostle John in 1 John says in chapter 4 verse 18, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. And what he's getting is that as believers, we are perfectly loved.
And the key to drive out fear is to know that we are perfectly loved. He's not talking about our perfect love for God driving out our fears, but God's perfect love for us driving out our fears. In fact, that whole book, if you look at chapter 5, that whole book was written, not that you may believe in Jesus and be saved, that's why John, the Gospel of John was written. But the whole book of 1 John was written to those who believe that they may have assurance, that they may know that they have eternal life.
But if you can see this elsewhere, John chapter 3 verse 36, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. First John chapter 5 verse 13, well, there it is in my notes. I got to have myself. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
And the Apostle Paul, of course, in Romans chapter 8 begins with, there is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus, right? For those who are in Christ Jesus. There's no condemnation now, right? Because Christ was condemned for us.
And at the end of Romans 8, there is no separation that will yet come. I'm convinced of this, right? Paul says that we have been loved and we will continue to be loved, neither life nor death, angels nor demons nor things present nor things future nor anything else. And all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
So there's other places, of course, where we see this kind of reason for confidence that we can have. And to add one more, Ephesians chapter 1 in verses 13 and 14, the Apostle speaks of the gift of the Holy Spirit. And when he does so, he says that we have been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it and to the praise of God's glory. And that's a commercial term, I've just mentioned this before.
It's a commercial term for a deposit or down payment or earnest money, if you like, that obligates the giver of the earnest money to make further payments. It's a promise that the full payment is coming. And this happens when you buy a house, or it typically has in the past. Somebody says, no, I really want to buy your home.
Okay, we'll prove it. All right, I'll give you a check for 5,000 now. And in 30 days, when all the paperwork is done, we'll close on this thing and you'll get the full amount. The Holy Spirit is the 5,000 in that illustration.
And he's not saying the fullness which he's yet to come. And God never remains on his contract. He doesn't, if he did in the situation of earnest money, it would be like a person giving the earnest and then walking away from the deal who keeps the earnest, the one to whom it was given, the one to whom the promise was made. And because the Holy Spirit is the earnest, God isn't walking away from his spirit.
He's not parceling out pieces of his spirit and leaving us. So all that to say, there's tremendous encouragement in the Bible to believe that we can be assured, as well as, of course, it's an acknowledgement that we need reassurance again and again. And they needed it because they just heard some scary words, some hard words as we looked at the last couple of weeks. So assurance is possible.
That's the first point. Now, as we get into the text more clearly here in verses 4 in the passage, notice that assurance ought to be a pastor's priority, but also our own personal priority. If the author wasn't concerned about this verse, people, he wouldn't have written about it, but having written verses 4 to 8 and having addressed them so strongly, they might have misunderstood him and thought he was talking about them, the believers he's writing to, and that they were in danger. But he says, no, though we speak in this way verse, none.
Yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. So he says, there are some who finally fall away and they evidence that they were never genuine. But I'm writing to you, and I have better things, and I believe in better things in your case. And so he's tender, he's affectionate, he calls them beloved.
That term is only used in the Bible in two ways, for Jesus, whom the Father calls his beloved son, and also for believers who are included in Jesus, the beloved. We are the beloved of God. And here the author uses that affectionate language, and he's also very encouraging. He contrasts them, those he spoke of in verses 4 to 6 who fell away.
But in your case, I'm sure of better things, what things, things that accompany salvation. And so here again, if you're wondering about the passage from last week, here again is evidence that the list in verses 4 to 6 of things that these people who had fallen away had previously experienced, and I won't walk you through the whole list again, but here's evidence that the things they had experienced were not saving benefits. They were not evidences of salvation because he sure of better things, things that accompany salvation, which wouldn't make sense if the things he said some had experienced also accompanied salvation. So John Owen says of the warning about those who fall away, though he had spoken it to them, he did not speak it of them, and again verse 8, the ones who fell away were those who demonstrated that their garden only produced thorns and thistles.
The rain falls, and some produce fruit, and the rain falls and some don't receive what falls and make use of it, and only thorns and thistles are produced. But they were fruitful. And now he speaks of their fruit. They were a fruitful garden.
What kind of fruit had they produced? Works, love, and service. Those three things. Verse 10, for God is not unjust, so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints as you still do.
What he's saying is, look, I know your track record. It's a track record of works. Works that evidence love for God and love for the saints and your service to the saints. Hebrews 10, if you look there sometime in verses 32 and following, the author says, but recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with suffering, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, sometimes being partners with those so treated for you in compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that yourselves had a better possession than a abiding one.
I mean, some of these folks had really been through it, and he knew of their works, incredible works, incredible times. They knew they weren't purchasing a better possession by their works. They knew that they already had that better possession, and it was an abiding possession so that no losses here could touch their gain there. No persecutor could take it away.
And so they loved God and the people of God. And so it's an important question, of course. The author notes their love for God. It's an important question.
Do we love God? Do we love Jesus? Christians are people who love Jesus. Do I love Jesus perfectly?
Well, no. A Christian confesses, I don't love him perfectly. I will someday, but not now. Another question is, do I love him as I ought to love him?
That's another way of saying the same thing. No, I don't. I don't. I love Jesus the way that I ought to love him.
I don't love him as much as I ought to because I ought to love him perfectly. But do I love Christ at all? Is the question. Well, yes, a Christian could say, I do love him.
I do love him not as much as I should. And I do love him, and I'd like to love him more. This is the basic disposition of a Christian. And the author notes it.
I've seen your works. I've seen their motivation in the love that you have for God because you know his love for you. And so they've begun to love. And then notice that their love spilled over into the lives of the believers around them.
Notice their service to the saints in verse 10. Their love manifested itself in practical kindness and care. First John 4 says, we know that we've passed from death to life. See, here's confidence.
How can you know? You can know. How can you know that you've passed from death to life because we love the brothers? The author says that we have a love in our heart for fellow believers simply because they are fellow brothers and sisters with us in the family of God.
Now, I didn't say, and the author doesn't. That means you like every brother and sister you meet. Right? And we have crazy uncles in the household of God.
And we have all kinds of personalities that just don't click. And we get that too. You're not going to be best friends with every other believer. But there's a disposition in the heart to love them simply because God made them family with you in his household.
And notice that the author here says this is present tense for them. It's not just thinking of their past experience, but their present tense. End of verse 10, he remarks about their serving the saints as you still do. That is a good reminder here, I think, that the author is interested not in what he saw many, many years ago, but when he continued to see.
And that's really a question that our elders will often talk through with new member candidates. It's wonderful to hear the story of what God did for a person back in the day. And sometimes those are extraordinary conversion experiences. And it's wonderful to hear those things.
Very encouraging. Don't get me wrong. But of course, the question we're ultimately interested in is not did you believe some time in the past, but are you now still believing? And that's the important question.
And here the author is saying, well, I have seen that your faith in Jesus, your genuine faith in Jesus has manifested in works and works of service, works of love and is one put it where there's smoke, there's fire. People also where there's fruit, there must be life. And so they had life and it was evident in their fruit. And not only does the author see it, but God sees it.
And so he says, the God who sees it is not unjust. He won't overlook it. He won't overlook your works and your love and your service. And don't read that as teaching.
And so God is rewarding works righteousness here. Some have it some down and if you produce work, righteousness, you'll be saved by your works. That's not what he's saying. It's not your works that make you right with God.
Not that God who's not unjust, God having become to us our loving heavenly Father, he delights in his children and he delights to see the fruit of his love productive in his children. He accepts our works and even delights in them, not as if they were perfect or could pass muster or could pass the scrutiny of perfection. Right? But he accepts them because he's already accepted us in Christ where his children and like any good father, he delights when his children show their love to him.
By when the kids are little coloring pieces of paper and giving it to dad or writing little notes or being kind to the other children in the family, the siblings. These are all evidences that this child belongs in this family, belongs to the Father and the Father delights. And so a father, a good loving Father, hangs those pictures on the wall or carries them in a bag or thinks of his children's service to the other children in the family, thinks of his love for them and theirs for him. And he won't treat them as if they don't belong.
No, he won't treat them as if they don't bear the family resemblance as if they're unfruitful. No, he treats them as children and God is not unjustly to treat you who are his children, even as he sees the fruit of that relationship. So this is just a wonderful passage here and it's then the author's pastoral priority that his hearers would have this full assurance about. But he also wants them to make it a personal priority that they have this personal assurance.
So that is verse 11. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end. He says, we want you to be earnest. We want you to be diligent to have full assurance.
So the warning was don't fall away, but the encouragement is to seek full assurance through faith in Jesus. Interestingly, interestingly, when he speaks of his confidence in their faith, it's based on knowing them and their profession of faith and seeing that fruit as we said. But when he turns to their confidence, he doesn't invite them to navel gaze at themselves or at their works, but he invites them to pay close attention to God. And we'll see that in verses 13 to 20, where he turns their attention to the promises of God in verse 13, the character of God in verse 18 in the work of Jesus verse 20.
That's next week's sermon. My point is, sometimes other people are a better judge of our spiritual condition than we are. And he looked at them and said, I see fruit. I see fruit and it gives me great confidence for you.
But when he turns to them, well, many Christians had a really super tender conscience and they said, they're always by themselves. I just don't think I'm very fruit. And he doesn't say, now I want you to look at your fruit like I do. And so you can have confidence.
No, he says, don't navel gaze. Don't look at yourself. But, and we'll see this next week, look at the promises of God to you, look at the character and faithfulness of God to you, look at what Jesus has done for you. Put your hope in him, not in yourself.
But that's the way then to be assured or reassured. And let me just add here, if you're not sure of your salvation, I would be glad to sit down with you. Let's have coffee. I'll give you some of the concerns that make you feel insecure.
And so, so, he says this is a pastoral priority, the assurance of the people. It ought to be our impersonal priority to be assured. And then finally here, he notes that their full assurance of salvation is productive. It's productive of perseverance, verse 12.
So picking up in verse 11, we desire that these one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience and hereth promises. He doesn't want them to be sluggish. He wants them to go on. He wants them to grow.
And the way to grow is to be grounded in the love of Christ, persuade if you belong to Him, that you're a child, you're a new creature, you've been saved, you're being saved, and you will be saved. That's the kind of assurance you need that's productive of growing up mature in Christ, not unstable, not insecure. And be assured of this, he says, because then you'll have the kind of hope that isn't sluggish, but the kind of hope that produces energy and tenacity to hold on. So I've told you this, some of you, this story before, I think it's just glorious, the school system in a large city had a program to help children who needed help keeping up with their work because of their stays in the city hospitals.
And so one day a teacher was assigned to the program and received a routine call asking her to visit some particular child. And she took the child's name and room number and talked briefly with the child's regular class teacher and the teacher said, well we're studying nouns and adverbs in his class right now and I'd be grateful if you could help him understand them so he doesn't fall too far behind. Well the hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon and nobody had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain and upset at the side of the boy, she stamored as she told him, I've been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs. And so she helped him and then she laughed and she felt like she hadn't really accomplished much at all.
But the next day a nurse asked her, what did you do to that boy? Well the teacher thought I must have done something wrong, begin to apologize. No, no, so the nurse, you know what I mean? We've been worried about that little boy but ever since yesterday his whole attitude has changed.
He's fighting back, he's responding to treatment. It's as though he's decided to live. Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived and everything changed when he came to a simple realization and he expressed it this way. They wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a tiny boy, would they?
She gave him hope. That hope carried him along, pulled him along, enabled him to persevere and to have the energy to fight for health and for life. Well the Christian's hope works that way in our experience too. It gives us the will to persevere.
Assurance as some have wrongly thought, assurance doesn't make us slothful, it doesn't make us eager to sin, though we've been accused of that, we who hold the view that you can know that you're saved and you will certainly be saved. And some have said, well that'll just make them think they can do whatever they want. Sin all the boy? No, that's not what assurance does and if you think being secure in love makes you eager, let's put it sparkly, to despise the one who loves you, well then maybe we haven't been loved very well in our own experience because being profoundly loved doesn't make you want to despise the one who loves you.
It makes you want to love them in return. And so when we see that laziness and sinfulness among those who believe in assurance of salvation, what we should blame is not their view of the doctrine. What we should blame is remaining corruption. We are not yet what we one day will be.
So it's not the doctrine of grace that produces lazy, slothful, sinful Christians. It's the remaining, indwelling sin that does so. And perhaps the weakness of our own sense of assurance likewise produces it. For the Apostle John says in 1 John 3 2, beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared.
But we know that when he does appear, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself even as he is pure. And so I'd ask do you have this hope? Do you have this assurance?
Well, then hold on and let your forefathers in the faith to be your example as you imitate them in persevering until you receive and inherit the promises that is the things that are promised. Let's pray. Father bless you and thank you that you're a great steadfast Savior and Jesus isn't fickle about us like we are too often. Give us a do pray that you would strengthen us, mature us in grace and grant that we would stand, mature in Christ and abound in his love for others.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Let's