061 - Confidence! (25 Sept 2021)

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Do you think of yourself as a confident person? I do. So what does that mean? What does it make you confident? Well, because I know something's going to happen, it changes my actions. Oh, well, I think the scripture says the same thing. We have a confidence in Christ that affects how we live.

Exactly, and we'll see that today in Hebrews 10 on More Than Ink. Well, good morning and welcome to our dining room table. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim.

And this is More Than Ink. This is where we sit at the table and we invite you to be our guest and study with us. We just saw a live performance of Beauty and the Beast a couple of weeks ago, and that amazing performance. Be our guest, where everything is dancing around in the dining room, which is just stuck with us. And so that kind of comes to mind when we say come and enjoy sitting at the table with us and feasting on the good things that God has to say.

So we hope you feel like our guest, because that's how we think of it. All these promises of the good things that come to us in Christ, which is really what the writer of Hebrews has been talking about. So that's where we are. We're in the letter to the Hebrews. We are now in chapter 10.

We're coming to the second half of the chapter 10 this morning. And so here we go. He turned a big corner here, because for weeks we've been talking about Moses and his law. Christ is superior to Moses, although Moses is identified with the first covenant, Jesus with the second covenant.

But still, they're both. And then we've been talking about the connections between the sacrifices and the high priests and coming near to God. All these imagery about the temple and about life with God and God living in our midst and all that kind of stuff. I don't know what that was, but we'll just keep going.

Strange sounds in the neighborhood, thus proving we are actually at home in our dining room. So he's gone through all this stuff, all this imagery of the temple. And after he finished his arguments last week about the superiority of this new sacrifice in Christ, before that he finished his talk about the superiority of Christ in terms of our high priest.

All these pictures. And now today, today he ties it all up. He ties all that discussion up in who Christ is in the context of what the Old Testament was trying to teach us. Right, because we've been talking about shadow or reality. Therefore, because the shadow has been completely fulfilled, now we have the reality. Yeah, and he's been talking in shadow terms.

He says, you know this shadow really well. So it should be pointing you to Christ and making that last connection for you to the reality. So today in verse 19 of chapter 10, he does his conclusion about this long discussion at the temple and how it points us to Christ. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Yeah, there we go. That's his big conclusion paragraph of the last 10 chapters.

Because all these things are true, then let us respond in these three ways. And see, he took us back to the temple. He says, so having confidence to enter the holy places, that's the pictures of the places in the temple. We've got the blood of the sacrifice of Jesus. The blood of the sacrifice, which is what brings you into the presence of God, but now through his superior sacrifice of the blood, taking you through the curtain that separated you from the holy of holies. Which he had talked about back in chapters 6 and 7.

Right, so that was a big deal. And that pathway, the way through the curtain, through the veil, is Jesus himself and the blood of Jesus. Jesus said in John 14, I'm the way, the truth and the life, that's the way, the way into the presence of God.

So that's clearly pictured in the Old Testament, as you saw, the blood dripped into the presence of God through the veil. Well, he said back in chapter 3, he's the architect and the builder of everything, and we are the house of God. And he is the high priest over this great house of God. This great priest.

Because that's the reality. Yes. Let us, let us, let us. So with all that behind us, with the understanding of that, so now we can draw near with a true heart. Again, not a damaged conscience from our sin you were talking about before, but a true heart in full assurance, and here's the key word, of faith. Of faith. That'll be a, that faith word is going to be a big issue in just a moment here, so he's going to segue to that next week. But, but yeah, so now we can with full assurance, no doubts, not wondering like, you know, Aaron's sons who died because they went into the presence. Right, is he going to zap me dead because I'm not doing what he should do. Right, did I sacrifice enough?

You didn't sacrifice enough, Jesus sacrificed enough for us. And so full assurance, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, finally, and our bodies washed with pure water. So, so yes, now that's open to us. But now he's kind of, he's starting to move us to look forward from here. So, so let's hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, and because he who promised is faithful. Okay, so we probably need to talk about that. Yeah, but this is where he turns to, we're looking forward now.

Right. Because we, you know, in our hip pockets, we have this assurance because of what Christ has done for us. But now, as we look forward, something changes in our attitudes and our actions.

So, so let's consider how to stir up one another toward love and a life that exhibits that love. Right, and a life that looks forward to what he had talked about so much before the promised rest of God. And you remember, he told us, you remember when the Israelites left Egypt and they were going to the promised land. They didn't get in because they didn't believe that God could actually take them in. So they were in this process of going from point A to point B, but in the end they decided that maybe God can't do it.

We don't believe God can do it. But the people who got in eventually, the next generation, and also Joshua and Caleb, they were the ones who stayed faithful. They held the faith about what God had promised and said, I'm going to stand on what he says and I'm putting my trust there. Well, because God had demonstrated to them all their lives that he was able to provide for them. That generation that actually walked into the land were the ones who had grown up eating manna every day.

They had grown up drinking water that came to them out of a rock. They had grown up seeing the glory, the Shekinah glory of God move over the tabernacle. So it was an informed faith. Yes, their faith was resting on evidence that this God is present and he is providing. Yeah, but at this point here he's kind of identifying with the Christian community and the Jewish Christian community because they're going through some troubles.

Hard times. And so do we persist, do we hold out to the end that God will bring us into this promised rest? Because he says there still exists a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

And that comes at the end of life basically. Okay, but we have to fix here on the fact that if we're teaching people how to study this on their own, it struck me as I was looking over this half chapter that there are places in this chapter where the writer puts things in groups of three. And this is the first one where he says, let us, let us, let us. Let us draw near, let us hold fast, and let us consider. So those are actions he's encouraging us to take on the basis of the reality of who Christ is and what he's done for us. That's why I say we're actually looking forward here.

So now that we've got this whole basis put down there, then let us do these things. But what is he strongly encouraging us to do? Draw near in the full assurance of faith, understanding what Christ has done and believing it. Let us hold fast that confession of our hope. Well, to hold fast to something means you cling to it.

Cling to what? The confession, the speaking of our hope. Saying the same thing God has said about us because he who promised is faithful. God will do what he said he will do. And that's what I mean about this promised rest.

That's that hope. And so the confession of that promised rest, that hope, we need to hold on to that and exhibit faith in clinging to that. And one way we do that is by gathering together as a body in our mutual confession. He says let's consider, let's think about this, let's think about ways to stir one another up, to act on what is true. And that happens best when we are in fellowship, when we gather together and encourage one another. Especially as things get harder and darker and the day draws near. So that's the context of this meeting together thing here in verses 24 and 25 is that times are going to get tough. You need to encourage one another. This is particularly important for us I think right now coming out of this season of isolation.

Oh yeah, from COVID. Right and many of you who are listening perhaps still have not returned to an in person corporate worship with your church body. And that is something perhaps you want to start considering.

Right. You need the physical presence of the rest of the body of Christ to encourage you. And you may have something to offer to bring to someone else to encourage them toward endurance and toward a promised goal of rest from God. All those things that God promises.

Because I think you know at the onslaught of all the bad things that go on around us you need someone who with a clear head is saying to you, but you know God is faithful, his promises are sound, we can rest on his hope, the confession of our hope. These things are realities. They are bigger realities than these things that threaten your life. Yes because when we remain in isolation the only voice we're hearing is our own.

Is our own. And we use the term an echo chamber. Yes God is still speaking, yes his word is still speaking and yes he is still nourishing and sustaining you. But you need, we all need the voice of the body of Christ to encourage us. Yeah so do you realize people encourage you when you come in their presence and do you realize that God may be using you.

You encourage them. Yeah to encourage them and the degree to which you stay apart from them you're withholding a voice channel you know that God wants to use for you to encourage other people. Indeed you know the writer of Hebrews opens the idea here that we, that might even be sin to be staying apart. Because he says in verse 26, for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth.

Well you know the idea of not believing God is sin. So that's really what he's talking about here but it may be connected when we neglect acting on the truth that God has revealed. And you know again I keep coming back to this promise of rest, this promise of abundant life that God mentions. And that's connected in the end of 25 to this day drawing means. That's the day that you enter into that rest.

That's the day that the Israelites walked into the promised land. But even for them that was only a shadow of this reality which is coming into God's promise rest. So we go on deliberately sinning if after knowing that that exists we keep kind of investing in our life here. Right. And that's what he's talking about in 25. Oh I like the way he put that investing in our life here. Yeah. Instead of.

Hoping for returns here so I'm saying. And letting go of our life here. Which he's going to get into in a minute. Yeah. We better press on. Yeah.

Well and I might mention too it's a dominant theme when we get into chapter 11. Right. So it's a big deal.

It's a really really big deal. So God did promise don't get discouraged if it's not coming quick enough for you. But his promise and that hope is still valid and it's quite operable it's going to happen. So should we go into 26? Yep.

I can read. Yep. He said deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth well there's no longer there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. But a fearful expectation of judgment.

And a. Wow. And a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

But how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace. Could we stop there for a second? Yeah. That's a whole bunch. Well because again there's a group of three. Yeah there is. Yeah. This is Druckme. He says there are three things. How much worse punishment will God do we deserve when we trample underfoot the Son of God.

What does that mean? Yeah. Do we deem Him worthless? Yeah. Deem Him as valuable as gravel on the ground. Right. Jesus said, you know, that salt that's lost at saltiness is good for nothing. It's a worthless thing.

He just threw it on the pathway. And who has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified. Regarded what is holy as not. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And then who has, I like this translation, outraged the spirit of grace, insulted, belittled, been rude to his face. Yeah.

Not just the spirit of power, the spirit of grace. So after coming to an understanding of the reality of who Christ is and what He's done, and then we act as though He's worthless. It's nothing.

He's not holy and what He's done is nothing and I can just ignore Him or I can spit in His face. Right. Right.

God will act. And he's hearkening back to some earlier arguments. Remember he compared Moses and Jesus. Now he's bringing up Moses and Jesus again because we know that the Jews, they honored Moses.

Right. But now he's saying, look, if you honored Moses and if you deliberately went against Moses, that was a bad deal. Something greater than Moses is here. Now you deliberately go against Jesus.

It's like worse. Right. Which is, that was the underlying thought too in Hebrews 2 where he says, so how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? You guys need to just wake up. There is no escape.

This is a big deal. So if the punishment was bad when you denied the laws of Moses, think of what it's like when you actually deny and outrage the spirit of grace. And I like how he uses that phrase. Spirit of grace. Grace is something he gives you that you don't deserve.

You don't deserve and can never deserve. Yeah. Here's, here's the spirit trying to give something that you probably would enjoy more than anything else in the universe.

And all you do is throw it out on the road and people walk on it. Oh man. So he's, he's, he's being, he's really amped it up right here. You know? And so, and 30 verse 30 is where I stopped reading. Well then he quotes the Old Testament, for we know him who said, vengeance is mine.

I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Yeah. Right? This idea of God being the only one who can rightly pay back, rightly judge and sort out to whom what is owed.

That's a big idea. Vengeance is mine. That's why the Lord says, don't you, don't you be taking vengeance into your own hands because it belongs to me. Right. I am the righteous judge. I will sort out what is right.

This is his very sobering conclusion in talking about this new covenant. This isn't an optional thing. This is, this is, this is the core path. This is the way and don't, don't ignore it. Don't trample on it.

Don't set it aside and say, well, that might be good for you, but it's not good for me. No, you know, and God is going to follow up on exactly where you stand relative to the new covenant, which is relative to who Jesus is. Is he your new high priest, the reality of the high priest? Is he the sacrifice who sacrificed for you?

Is he all those things to you? If not, if you just throw them aside, vengeance is mine, says the Lord. God will. Oh man. Yeah.

God will pay back. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, and then in fact I think he includes a section that starts in 25, you know, if we go on sinning deliberately. Right. And that doesn't mean when you fall from time to time, it doesn't mean Christians are sinless, but if you, he's talking about embracing that life of sin.

That's when I talk about investing in the here and now. Yeah, and he had actually talked about this a little bit in chapter three. He did. Yeah.

He very much did. So you all who are listening, go back and read that portion when he talks about what it is to, as, as believers, he warns them, don't be turning your back on this truth. Yeah.

Let me turn to it here for a second. And when you're going, it's really the difference when we talk about sin between us sinning when we lie, when we do kinds of stuff. Right.

Things that even as believers we regret and we grieve over, but it's different than like, you know, if you were Al Capone and you took out machine guns and you killed the guy. I mean, you actually. Premeditated. You actually employed it. In full awareness.

You employed it as a way of life for you. Okay. So here's the passage I was looking for.

It's three, 12, and 13. Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart in falling away from the living God. See, this is not something that happens by accident. This is a deliberate turning away, but encourage one another day after day. As long as it's still called today, lest there be in any one of you, any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, that we allow ourselves to be deceived by sin. Oh, sin's offering me a better deal. Right.

That's the investment in the here and now, which is never going to fulfill. I will sort that out for you. Believe me, because I always do what I say I will do. Okay.

Okay. So that was his warning based on your behavior. And then he tries to encourage you to kind of hearken back to when you first came to know him in 32, you know. So recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you came to know, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. It was tough. Sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, sometimes being partners with those so treated, for you had compassion on those in prison.

You joyfully accepted the plundering of your properties since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Do we really believe that? Yeah. Well, there's the investment in here now versus placing hope in the future.

That's right. And then 35, therefore, don't throw away your confidence. Don't throw away your confidence, you know, which has great reward for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. Again, we're still pushing toward that goal of the promises of God, that promise to rest, that Hebrews 4, there remain to Sabbath rest for the people of God. Okay, so if we're observing carefully, I saw here another set of three things.

Oh. It says, therefore, because of all of this, because God is a God of vengeance, he will sort it out and remember who you are in him. Therefore, don't throw away your confidence, remember, what is our confidence?

To enter the holy place, the very presence of God, the blood of Christ. And our confidence in the veracity of God's promises. That's right. Yeah. And then you have need of endurance so that when you've done the will of God, hold fast the confession of your hope, which he'd said right at the beginning of the chapter. Which is the point of us gathering together to help one another. Right.

So because God is faithful and he will do what he said he would do, you will receive the promise. Yeah. So if you hold fast, don't throw away your confidence based on surface suffering or surface persecution or... Yeah.

It sounds like they were having a tough time. Right. And a tough time holding out, you know, for the promise of God. Has it come?

When will it come? When will these sufferings come to an end? Right. Right. And that's the reality at the time. Do I... And I think that's actually... That's the trade-off we make all the time in our present life struggles is, can I really trust God that his promise for abundant life's gonna happen?

Should I still stick with that? Is he faithful to that? But again, that's exactly what the Israelites were questioning as they came up to the brink of the promised land. Can I really trust in God's promise that this is gonna work, that we'll find abundant life there? Or should we take control of the situation and go back to where we came from? Yeah.

And he's talking about exactly the same thing right here. Should I go back to the things in this world that are icky and horrible, but I think I've got a better shot at finding abundant life in? So this is where gathering together, not neglecting the gathering together and confessing our hope to one another is hugely helpful.

Very helpful. In strengthening one another for the endurance required to get through these days. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very true.

Because like you said, it's awfully true that when you're in the depth of a pit of horrible stuff going on in your life, you can't hardly see anything else. That's right. So it is such a wonderful welcome thing when someone comes to you and say, look, God's promises are trustable. Right. And let's confess together what we know is true of what Jesus has done for us and what God is going to finish well for us.

We will endure because he will bring us through. And that takes place best in fellowship. Yep. Yep.

That's the context that it works in. And so with that in mind, in terms of encouraging one another, he says in 37, he says, for yet a little while, a little while. Feels like a long time. I know. But in God's view, it's a little while.

Yeah, a little while. And the coming one will come and will not delay. This is what you actually tell one another in the endurance discussions, yeah. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And that's, you know, trusting what God says. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But as he closes here, he says, but we're not as those who shrink back.

No. And are destroyed. But of those who have faith and preserve their souls. We're the ones who are taking God at his word, and God promises us rest and pasture-like existence.

Psalm 23, he's promising us abundant life. And I'm gonna put my trust by faith in what he says, because he's trustable. My faith has a resting place, and it's who he is and what he said.

And I'm sticking there. Well, and as in the next couple of weeks, in the next couple chapters, we're gonna talk about the reality of what faith really is. Yeah, it's important here. It's resting on a concrete reality that we can't always see with our physical eyes.

Yeah, it's a key pivot he's put in right here. And we already have the example of going into the promised land and what faith is like there. And so what really is faith? How do I know if I'm actually living by faith, living in constant expectation of God's promises coming true, even though all my circumstances seem to be going down a hole? But how do I actually live by faith? And so I think that issue he's brought up now, he's mentioned the word faith a couple of times, and right here in verse 39, I think this is what's picking people's thinking right here.

So what is faith, and how do I actively live in faith on God's promises? And so fasten your seatbelts. So fasten your seatbelts. He's gonna give us a concrete definition and then some very concrete examples of faith in chapter 11. That's coming up in chapter 11.

Boy, I recommend you read ahead a little bit. I'm so excited. I'm so excited about this, that I actually have chosen this fall to embark on a 10-week study of faith with the local women that I lead. And so I'm really excited about refreshing women in their understanding of what it means to live according to an unseen reality. People's understanding of faith can be kind of screwy. And so I think the preeminent passage almost everyone goes to to find faith is coming up next week in Hebrews. And again, the context is we have a promise from God. It seems like God's being slow bringing that promise to fruition.

And we're going through a lot of hard times. Can I still cling to this promise? And remember for the Israelites, they were 40 years in the desert. Can I cling to this promise that God indeed will come good on his promises to me of life and in the midst of hard times?

That's a hard thing to do. And they were, those children of Israel wandering in the desert were the children of Abraham of whom God had said, he is a righteous man because he believes me. That's what Genesis says of Abraham. Genesis 15, six, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. So faith, and we're going to look at examples of faith.

That's what he's going to do. He's going to he's going to harken back to the common Jewish background, everyone here and say, let me illustrate to you all these guys you know about in the Old Testament. Let me illustrate to you faith in their lives because faith is not just a new covenant thing. It's an all covenant thing, even from the very beginning. And remember in Hebrews, in Hebrews four, he said, you know, they had good news preached to them in the desert, but the message here, it didn't benefit them because it was not united by faith. Didn't connect in their hearts with faith, believing that God would do what he said he would do.

So that's where we're going to pick up next week. So what is faith? And how do I live a life of faith rather than something else? So that's a question. That's a great question. What does that mean for us?

And it is often messed up today. So it'll be just a great time as we look at examples in the Old Testament and try to define what that kind of life looks like. So I'm Jim and I'm Dorothy and then I'm enjoying this. We hope you'll be back with us next week. Yeah. So come back next week as we jump into Hebrews 11 in more than more than more than faith. I like that better. Yeah, let's do that instead. Okay, we'll see you next week. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Are you confident?

I mean, do you know how do you know you're confident? Yeah, that was really bad.