Author: Lamar Austin

We are in that great faith chapter, Hebrews 11, where the author of Hebrews is encouraging his readers to endure in their faith, waiting in hope of gaining their ultimate reward.  In this chapter he gives example after example of Old Testament saints who did just that, enduring in faith, waiting for a reward that this did not receive in their lifetime, but would ultimately receive.  The author has already exhorted the church to be “imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (6:12), and now he provides multiple OT examples of such faith.  Many of these OT figures also exhibited obvious failings, yet their more pious actions evidenced a strong belief in God’s ability to deliver on his promises.

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Having given us faith’s character in verse 1, the writer now calls to mind faith’s activism in verse 2: “For by it the people of old received their commendation.”  The “it” that caused them to receive commendation was their faith—because they trusted God’s promises, they receive commendation.

In OT times, he points out, there were many men and women who had nothing but the promises of God to rest upon, without any visible evidence that these promises would ever be fulfilled; yet so much did these promises mean to them that they regulated the whole course of their lives in their light.  The promises related to a state of affairs belonging to the future; but these people acted as if that state of affairs were already present, so convinced were they that God could and would fulfill what he had promised.  In other words, they were men and women of faith.  Their faith consisted simply in taking God at his word and directing their lives accordingly; things yet future as far as their experience went were thus present to faith, and things outwardly unseen were visible to the inward eye.  It is in these terms that our author now describes the faith of which he has been speaking.  (F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the NT: Hebrews, 276)

Our author, however, does not only accumulate a series of examples; he sets them in historical sequence so as to provide an outline of the redemptive purpose of God, advancing through the age of promise until at last in Jesus, faith’s “pioneer and perfecter,” the age of fulfillment is inaugurated. (F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the NT: Hebrews, 278)

All the ancients in Israel who received divine commendation received it because of the character of their faith—their faith’s future certitude as they were sure of what they hoped for—and their faith’s visual certitude as they were certain of the invisible.  Read down through these verses and you will see that God was pleased with their faith.  God was pleased with Noah and saved him and his family.  God was pleased with Abram’s faith and credited righteousness to his account.  Our faith pleases God (Heb. 11:6).

Why? Because faith looks away from self and to the Savior.  Faith is an act of self-renunciation and a declaration that our hope and confidence are in God.  Faith puts no trust in man but in God only.  It declares that he is enough; he is sufficient; he is able. 

The reason it’s important to take note of this statement that “without faith it is impossible to please God” is because in none of the three stories noted here is faith ever mentioned.  All that is said in the stories of Abel, Enoch, and Noah is that they “pleased” God.  But that is how we know they had great faith, because “without faith it is impossible to please God.”

We need to recognize that faith is not a meritorious work that we do to gain rewards from God.  That would conflict with the entire teaching of the New Testament, that faith is simply the channel through which God’s blessings flow.  Two seemingly paradoxical things are true of faith: On the one hand, it is our responsibility to believe the gospel, because God commands us to believe (Mark 1:15).  On the other hand, sinners are unable to believe because of spiritual blindness (2 Cor. 4:4), deafness (Luke 8:10), being bound by Satan (2 Tim. 2:26) and even spiritual death (Eph. 2:1). 

Saving faith comes as God’s gift, not as a human effort (Eph. 2:8-9).  Jesus is both the author and perfecter of faith (Heb. 12:2).

The people of old (Gk. presbyteroi, “elders”), especially those listed as examples of faith throughout the chapter, received commendation in the form of a good testimony from God.   It refers here to the believers of the Old Testament and more specifically to the forefathers, both physically as well as spiritually, of those to whom this is addressed.

The author does not focus on their failings (e.g., Gen. 9:20–27; 12:10–20; 17:17–21; 18:11–15), since his goal is to positively illustrate what faith looks like and to connect the current people of God with this “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1).  You would think that their sinful failings would disqualify them, but instead their faith secures God’s approval.  Faith reaches out to the promise.

The list includes a man who was a murderer, a woman who was a prostitute, people who were afraid, rebellious, and even those who committed adultery.  Yet they gained approval with God – not because of their actions, but because of their faith.

Faith is the instrumental cause of God’s approval.  Grace is the ultimate cause.  Grace is what causes God to offer us good gifts—like forgiveness, adoption and eternal life—freely and without cause (in us).

The verb “received commendation” is actually ἐμαρτυρήθησαν.  The idea here is that the actions of the Old Testament saints bore witness of their faith in God.  It was an active, productive faith.  Real faith is always active and productive.  Good works are a (super)natural by-product of faith.  They will occur because true faith is present.

Some attribute the statement “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone” to Martin Luther.  Actually John Calvin said in his Antidote to the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic denial of the tenets of the Reformation:

I wish the reader to understand that as often as we mention Faith alone in this question, we are not thinking of a dead faith, which worketh not by love, but holding faith to be the only cause of justification. (Galatians 5:6; Romans 3:22.) It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.

According to Roland Bainton’s biography of Luther, Here I Stand, Luther wrote at one time:

Faith is a living, restless thing. It cannot be inoperative. We are not saved by works; but if there be no works, there must be something amiss with faith.

And thus we see that all of the examples mentioned in Hebrews 11 had a faith that acted.

R. Kent Hughes reminds us…

Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (alluded to in 11:34). They had nothing but God’s word to rest on. They had no visible evidence that they would be delivered in this life. But they knew they would ultimately be delivered—they knew it so well that it was a present reality.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16–18)

There is no evidence that any of them had ever seen the invisible world at work around them, but they did see it by faith and were certain of it. Graciously, God did let them see it with their physical eyes when he delivered them. Remember Nebuchadnezzar’s astonished words as he watched the trio in the flaming furnace:

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” (Daniel 3:24, 25)

The faith of the trio consisted simply in taking God at his word and living their lives accordingly. Things yet future, as far as their experience went, were present to their faith. Things unseen were visible to their individual eyes of faith.

And so it goes for every example in the great Hall of Faith of Hebrews 11—from Abel to Samuel to the unnamed heroes of the faith. (R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, Volume 2, pp. 63-64).

A couple of questions before we get into verse 3.

First, have you gained God’s approval by putting your trust in Christ alone as your only hope of heaven?  As we saw in chapter 10, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is the only basis for forgiveness of sins.  Don’t put your trust in your own good works.  They avail nothing.  You get no credit at all.  In fact, you are deeply in the hole because of your own misbehaviors.  They are counted against you.  Only the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ has pleased the Father and only by trusting in Christ can that righteousness be credited to your account.

Second, are you still pleasing God by living by faith today?  Some people believe that they are saved by faith and sanctified by their own efforts.  That is not so.  That is another lie from Satan.  We are to continue to live by faith, trusting that the righteousness of Christ credited to my account and my union with Christ will mean that He will live His righteous life through me.  Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Now, in verse 3 our author says: “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

This is the first occurrence in a series of twenty-one uses of the phrase by faith.  (William Hendriksen & Simon J. Kistemaker, NT Commentary: Hebrews, 312)

So verse 3 is a specific illustration of the definition of faith in verse 1b.

Here’s the question: How do we know that God made the world out of nothing that is seen?  Not only were we not there when it happened, but, even if we had been there, we would not have been able to see the act of creation, because you can’t see the word of God.  So how can we know or “understand” that the worlds were made by the word of God?  How can we know that “what is seen was made out of things invisible” – namely the word of God?

Verse 3 answers, “by faith.”  “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.”  This may seem like a circular argument.

John Piper resolves this by saying:

So the crucial question is: How is faith “evidence” of things unseen, namely, that God created the world by his word?  I take my clue from the one other place in the New Testament where God’s invisible attributes are said to be “clearly seen” by man, namely, Romans 1:20. “Since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made.”  The word “understood” here in Romans 1:20 is the same word as in Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.”

So there in Romans 1:20 it says, “we understand the invisible attributes of God by what has been made.”  And here in Hebrews 11:3 it says, we understand the invisible word of God behind creation by faith.  Romans 1:20 seems to say that the evidence that God made the world is the things made – they clearly point to a Maker.  Hebrews 11:3 seems to say that the evidence that God made the world is faith.  

Now think about this for a moment.  What shall we make of it?  Here’s what I make of it.  Faith – at least in part – is the spiritual seeing or perceiving of the fingerprints of God on the things he has made.  Now the fingerprints of God on the things he has made – the order, the beauty, the greatness, the “irreducible complexity” (as Michael Behe says, in Darwin’s Black Box) – are the evidence that God made the world.  But so is the seeing of these fingerprints a kind of evidence.  It’s just the other side of the coin.

If you ask me, “How do you know Focus on the Family has a headquarters in Colorado Springs,” I will say, “I saw it on Tuesday.”  My seeing is evidence that it is there.

I think that is the way faith is the evidence of things unseen.  We all look at the same fingerprints, but some see and some don’t. Those who see have the evidence – the testimony – in themselves. (https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-faith-knows-and-hopes-for)

Philosophically we are left in the air by creation.  Infinite categories await us on either side of the argument.  Either matter existed from all time (and that is an infinite idea) or it was made out of nothing (another infinite category).  Logically and philosophically we are stymied.  Only by faith can we hope to understand.  We of faith are not embarrassed to say, “God created the heavens and the earth.”  Not to say that is to cast ourselves on some unknown, impersonal force that cares little if at all for what happens to creatures of this world.  Our faith tells us that there is a father and Creator Who cares after He has thrown the magnificence of the universe into its balanced structure.  (Louis H. Evans, Jr., The Communicator’s Commentary: Hebrews, 198)

God’s creation of the universe was accomplished by his word (Gk. rhēma).  So that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible is consistent with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (Latin, “from nothing”), but is not itself a full statement about this reality.  It does, however, seem to correct Greco-Roman notions about eternally existing matter.  The idea that God created the visible universe out of some other kind of invisible (“not … visible”) matter is not in the author’s mind; rather, he is saying that God did not make the universe out of any preexisting matter as humans know it, which is close to saying that he made it “out of nothing.” Further support for this idea is found in Gen. 1:1; Ps. 33:6, 9; 90:2; John 1:3; Acts 14:15; Rom. 4:17.

When we read Genesis, we see that it is the word out of the mouth of God that caused this creation to come into existence and then be formed and filled.

Genesis 1:1-3 says…

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1 establishes a pattern that everything is created by what God said (vv. 1, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26) so that whatever God says establishes reality, something the Tempter denied to Eve.

Psalm 33:6, 9 emphasize the same.

6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

If God can therefore bring something out of nothing as He did at creation, can we not trust Him now to reverse any negative circumstance?  He certainly is able!

Faith is what looks at that created order and has a firm and resolute confidence in the God to whom it bears witness, who, though unseen, has provided a foundation for such a confidence through his mighty acts.  (George H. Guthrie, The NIV Application Commentary: Hebrews, 375)

“Looking at the earth from this vantage point, looking at this kind of creation, and to not believe in God, to me, is impossible… to see [the earth] laid out like that only strengthens my beliefs.” (Astronaut John Glenn after viewing the world from outer space for a second time.)  (Quoted in Internet for Christians Newsletter, Nov. 9, 1998; Leadership, Spring 1999, 75)

Kent Hughes begins his sermon on the beginning of Hebrews 11 with this story:

AS THE STORY GOES, a man despairing of life had climbed the railing of the Brooklyn Bridge and was about to leap into the river when a policeman caught him by the collar and pulled him back.  The would-be suicide protested, “You don’t understand how miserable I am and how hopeless my life is.  Please let me jump.”

The kindhearted officer reasoned with him and said, “I’ll make this proposition to you.  Take five minutes and give your reasons why life is hopeless and not worth living, and then I’ll take five minutes and give my reasons why I think life is worth living, both for you and for me.  If at the end of ten minutes you still feel like jumping from the bridge, I won’t stop you.”

The man took his five minutes, and the officer took his five minutes.  Then they stood up, joined hands, and jumped off the bridge!

Gallows humor to be sure, but it is painfully parabolic of today’s culture, which has abandoned its Christian roots for a vacuous secularism.  Indeed, if one factors God out of life’s equation and adopts the view that we are little more than cosmic accidents, life, with its inevitable hardships and suffering, becomes hard to defend.  In fact, suicide has been considered more intellectually consistent, even stylish, by some existential intellectuals in the last few decades.

But for the Christian there is substantial reason for hope in this life and the life to come because of the promises of God’s Word.  In fact, 1 Peter 1:3 tells that we have been “born again to a living hope.”  Now, the degree of our experience of hope is proportionate to the degree of our faith.  The more solid and certain our faith, the more profound our hope.  A deeply intense faith spawns a deeply intense hope.

This was important to the writer of Hebrews because of the rising storm of persecution that was about to fall on the church.  He knew that the key to survival was a solid faith and a resultant hope.  That is why in 10:38 he quoted Habakkuk 2:4, “But my righteous one shall live by faith.”  There is a spiritual axiom implicit here: faith produces hope, and hope produces perseverance .  Without faith one will inevitably shrink back.

Having introduced faith and endurance in 10:39, the writer proceeded to develop these concepts further.  He celebrates the character of faith in chapter 11 and then summons the readers to endurance in 12:1-13.  The first of these sections is exposition, and the second is exhortation.

“The characteristic vocabulary of this section relates to the vital issue of enduring disciplinary sufferings.  Anticipating the subsequent development in 12:1-13, the writer underscored the community’s need for hypomone, ‘endurance,’ in 10:36.  That note is resumed in 12:1, when the commitment required of the Christian life is reviewed under the metaphor of an athletic contest, and the key to victory is found in ‘endurance.'” (William Lane, Hebrews 9—13, p. 313).

It may help to see what might be called the “bookends” of Hebrews 11. Just a few verses earlier in Hebrews 10:36 our author told them that they had “need of endurance” (Heb. 10:36).  They needed to persevere and endure and press into the promises of God. And then immediately following Hebrews 11, in Hebrews 12:1, he exhorts them to “run with endurance the race that is set before” them.  So here we find Hebrews 11, tucked in between this call for endurance in chapter ten and then again in chapter twelve.  My point is simply that the examples of faith that we find in Hebrews 11 are all designed to encourage these first-century professing Christians to hold on tightly to Christ, to persevere in their confidence in him, to endure by clinging to him and all the blessings that God has given us in his Son.

You need to recognize what a brilliant theological and spiritual strategy this is.  The men and women to whom Hebrews is written were contemplating going back to the religious ways of people like Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Gideon and David (the very people of whom Hebrews 11 speaks).  So what does our author do?  He describes these Old Testament saints as people who lived in daily confidence and faith in the promise of God that something better was coming.  That is to say, these great men and women of old lived in confident faith and expectation of the coming of the Savior from whom these first-century believers were tempted to walk away! (These last two paragraphs are from Sam Storms).

With the important connection between faith and hope now understood, the preacher launches into an eloquent song of faith that occupies the whole of chapter 11, beginning with a brief description of faith in verses 1–3 that is followed by a lyrical catalog of grand examples in verses 4–40.  As we take up verses 1–3 and the theme of what “faith is,” we must keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive definition, but rather a description of a faith that perseveres. In fact, there is a better definition of faith in Romans 4:21, where Paul says, “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”  That is what genuine, biblical faith is, being fully convinced that God is able to do what He has promised us.

Hebrews 11 is a favorite chapter of many.  It has been called “The Saints’ Hall of Fame,” “The Heroes of Faith,” “The Honor Roll of the OT Saints,” “The Westminster Abbey of Scripture,” and “The Faith Chapter” (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 285)

Here in Hebrews 11 will consider faith under three headings: Faith’s Character , v. 1; Faith’s Activism , v. 2; and Faith’s Understanding , v. 3.

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

George Guthrie notes: “Over the past two centuries those of us in the Western world have embraced a very non-biblical view of faith as ‘a leap in the dark.’  Largely this view comes from a philosophical orientation known as existentialism.  One version of that philosophy goes something like this: in the modern world we know that miracles don’t happen, so basic beliefs of Christianity—like a man rising from the dead—can’t be true.  So to continue to embrace Christianity, we must turn our backs on the facts and take a leap of faith.’”

This approach to faith has even been memorialized in movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Remember near the end of the movie, when Indy had come to vast chasm.  He had to have “faith”—shut his eyes and step off into nothing.  Of course, he stepped onto an invisible bridge, and everything was OK!  That’s Hollywood’s version of faith.  A blind leap.  That is not biblical faith.  One place we can look for the biblical alternative is Hebrews 11” (https://georgehguthrie.com/new-blog/biblical-faith)

So, it is vitally important for us today, as well as these Hebrews, to understand the true nature of faith.  It is not a “leap in the dark,” regardless of the evidence.  It is not a faith in faith.  It is belief in God’s promises. 

Faith is not a feeling, like the line from Oklahoma:

O what a beautiful morning,

O what a beautiful day.

I’ve got a wonderful feeling,

Everything’s going my way!

It is not optimism or bootstrap positive thinking either.  It is not a hunch.    It is not sentimentality.  The cynical Ambrose Bierce wrongly described faith in his Devil’s Dictionary as “belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.”

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

True faith is neither brainless nor a sentimental feeling.  It is a solid conviction resting on God’s words that makes the future present and the invisible seen… The great Bishop Westcott says of verse 1, “The general scope of the statement is to indicate that the future and the unseen can be made real by faith.”

Faith is not irrational, rather it is supra-rational.  It is based on a supernatural power to fulfill promises which God asks us to trust.  These are rational because we can understand them and because God has been faithful in the past.

In the Greek text the verb “is” (estin) is the first word.  Faith is a present and continuing reality. . . . This meaning is that there are realities for which we have no material evidence though they are not the less real for that.  (Frank E. Gæbelein, Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 12, 113)

The Greek noun here is pistis, which can be translated as “faith,” “trust” or “belief” and sometimes “faithful,” depending upon the context.

Our author describes faith in two ways in verse 1.  First, “faith is the substance of things hoped for.”

“Faith is the substance” (hupostasis).  The Greek word here gives the sense of something foundational, basic, a concrete reality upon which other things are built.  Stasis, the root of the word, means the place, setting, a standing pillar, that upon which other stones are placed.  The prefix hupo means “under” or “below.”  Together the result signifies something solidly foundational, concrete in reality, something assured. 

Thus, faith as defined by our exhorter is not an imaginary product of the mind fabricated out of its own philosophical needs or rationalistic dreams, but that which is firm, solid, of real existence.  Faith is the solid certainty of that for which we hope, based upon reality and solid existence.  (Louis H. Evans, Jr., The Communicator’s Commentary: Hebrews, 196)

“To the writer to the Hebrews faith is a hope that is absolutely certain that what it believes is true, and that what it expects will come.  It is not the hope which looks forward with wistful longing; it is the hope which looks forward with utter certainty.  It is not the hope which takes refuge in a perhaps; it is the hope which is founded on a conviction” (William Barclay, pp. 144-45).

This is just another way of talking about the “already” and “not yet” dimensions of Christian experience.  There is much that is “not yet” ours.  We await it.  It will come when Christ returns.  But there is also a part of that future inheritance that is “already” ours, and faith is what makes it possible for us to experience and enjoy today what will come in fullness only when Christ returns.

There is a sense in which that future promise is already and substantially here when we trust God’s word.  Faith gives to our future inheritance a present reality and power, as if it is already possessed.  No one has expressed this with greater clarity than John Piper:

“In other words, faith grasps – lays hold of – God’s preciousness so firmly that in the faith itself there is the substance of the goodness and the sweetness promised.  Faith doesn’t create what we hope for – that would be a mere mind game.  Faith is a spiritual apprehending or perceiving or tasting or sensing of the beauty and sweetness and preciousness and goodness of what God promises – especially his own fellowship, and the enjoyment of his own presence.

Faith does not just feel confident that this is coming some day.  Faith has spiritually laid hold of and perceived and tasted that it is real.  And this means that faith has the substance or the nature of what is hoped for in it.  Faith’s enjoyment of the promise is a kind of substantial down payment of the reality coming” (sermon, What Faith Knows and Hopes For, June 1, 1997; www.desiringgod.org). 

Faith is so assured of the future (because of God’s promises) so that they already seem to have been fulfilled in the present.

Is this the kind of faith you have?

Faith grabs hold of what is hoped for, as something real and substantial.  It believes that God’s promises are sure.

If you have the substance (the thing you hoped for) or you could see it, you wouldn’t need faith.  It is because you cannot see it or you don’t have it yet that you need faith.  You have to trust that God has the power to be faithful to keep His promises to you.

As William Lane explains:

Faith celebrates now the reality of the future blessings which make up the objective content of Christian hope.  Faith gives to the objects of hope the force of present realities, and it enables the person of faith to enjoy the full certainty that in the future these realities will be experienced (William L. Lane, Hebrews: A Call to Commitment (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988), p. 149).

The second half of verse 1 joins faith’s future certitude to the parallel visual certitude that comes through faith, because faith means having “the conviction of things not seen.”

Our faith is the organ by which we are enabled to see the invisible order—and to see it with certainty, just as our eyes behold the physical world around us.  What do we see?  As we have mentioned, we see the future because it is made present to us through faith. But we also see more—namely, the invisible spiritual kingdom around us.

Sometimes God opens our physical eyes to see these spiritual realities.

Genesis 28 records how Jacob, on that miserable night he fled from Esau into the wilderness, forlorn and alone, laid his weary head on a rock to sleep, and “he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.  And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!” (Genesis 28:12).  In a flash he saw what had been around him all the time—angelic commerce between Heaven and earth on his behalf! The account records, “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’  And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’” (Genesis 28:16, 17).  Jacob saw the unseen spiritual order, and that is what we see by faith.

And in 2 Kings 6 the king of Syria sends his army against Israel.  He surrounded the city and Elisha’s servant asked, “Alas, my master, what shall we do?”  Elisha said, “”Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

He could see something that his servant could not yet see.  So Elisha prayed and said, “O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.”  So the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (2 Kings 6:14-17).

But most of the time we must “walk by faith” rather than by sight (2 Cor. 5:7).

Faith brings a dynamic dual certitude to everyday life. First, there is future certitude as that which is to come becomes present to us. Second, there is a visual certitude as we see the invisible.

In summary then faith is a kind of spiritual tasting of what God has promised so that we feel a deep, substantial assurance of things hoped for; and faith is a kind of spiritual seeing of the invisible fingerprints of God in the things he has made. By the one we know God’s power and wisdom to make us, and by the other we know his goodness and grace to save us.

So I say with Psalm 34:8, “O taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!”

Our author is encouraging the Hebrews and us to exercise a faith that makes the future a present reality and the invisible visible to our spiritual eyes.  This will result in an action-oriented, enduring faith, one that is strong and robust.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had that kind of faith.  They will be referred to in verse 34 of this chapter.  They refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, which caused the offended king to threaten to throw them into the blazing furnace.  Their response shows that by faith, they were making real in their present crisis the future promises of God regarding eternal life.  By faith they saw the unseen God as more real than the enraged king standing in front of them, threatening to roast them alive.  Listen to how faith oozes out of verses 16-18.  They say, “”O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.  If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.  But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

And what happened?  Not only did they survive, but Christ appeared with them in the fiery furnace.  Their faith allowed them to enjoy that special experience of His presence with them.

The American Revolution was all but lost.  Powerful British force had crushed the American colonial force at New York City and put them to flight that summer.  The British and their Hessian allies had then occupied free colonies, effectively cutting the rebels in two, they had advanced within sight of Philadelphia, the rebel capital, from their perspective.   George Washington had lost 90% of his army, and had been driven-what was left of his army–driven across the Delaware River.  Many soldiers had been lost to death, to disease, to injury, and to capture.  Many more had deserted.  And as the year 1776 came to a close, Washington stood to lose even more soldiers legally at the end of that year, December 31st, when their enlistment would end, and they could just walk away.  The morale of his army was at an all-time low.  But on Christmas night of 1776, as the howling Nor’easter struck the region, George Washington crossed the Delaware River and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison in Trenton, killing or capturing over 1000 men.  The Second Battle of Trenton followed within a few days, as the rejuvenated Americans held off a counter-attack by some of Lord Cornwallis’ best troops.

Almost trapped at that point, Washington slipped away under cover of darkness, stole behind the enemy and hit them a third time at Princeton and won another victory over British Brigade at Princeton.  The course of the entire war was changed with those events.  More than anything, General Washington had given his army what it could not fight without, and that is confidence in final victory.  Without that confidence, an army will quickly surrender in the face of the foe.  But having confidence, an army will overcome even appalling odds and when shocking victories come, it genuinely believes it can win, no matter what the odds.

Well, if confidence was important for General Washington’s Army, how much more for the army of Jesus Christ in this world?  We are faced with a foe so powerful that if we could see all of his power unleashed against us, we would quickly surrender.  As Martin Luther put it, “Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing,” we would quickly give up.  We must have absolute confidence, unshakable confidence in Christ’s final victory in order to fight well.   And without that confidence, we will easily, we will quickly crumble in the face of the battle that faces us.

Going through hardship isn’t easy.  We endure it for a while and then sometimes give in.  It is hard to endure when suffering goes on and on and on.  Suffering causes us to question our faith and we may turn away from God.  If something we believe is causing hurt and pain in our lives, we re-examine that belief and possibly reject it.

This is what was happening in the lives of these Hebrews, some of whom were genuine believers and others who had experienced some spiritual experiences and associated themselves with the faith for awhile.  However, persecution was causing them to question whether it was worth following Christ.

32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.  34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.  35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.  36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.  37 For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; 38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”  39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

They had endured public ridicule, ministered to fellow believers in prison, and endured economic hardships.  The reason that they were able to do so, and joyfully do so, was because “you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”  They had run their race well so far.  The Holy Spirit now moves from the readers’ past persecutions and trials to their present duress.  Since they had been faithful in enduring trials, they had “need of endurance” still.

Now was not the time to throw away confidence in a better reward (cf. 3:6; 4:16; 10:19). They needed endurance to persevere, to “keep on keeping on,” as the saying goes.

The “therefore” here gives the inference or implication of how the readers endured past trials and how they should relate to their present sufferings.  The Holy Spirit here draws a conclusion from verses 32–34.  Given how they had successfully handled all their past sufferings, they should not throw away their confidence.

We have all heard of the famous high-wire aerialists the Flying Wallendas, and about the tragic death of their leader, the great Karl Wallenda, in 1978.  Shortly after the great Wallenda fell to his death (traversing a seventy-five-foot high-wire in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico), his wife, also an aerialist, discussed that fateful San Juan walk.  She recalled: “All Karl thought about for three straight months prior to it was falling.  It was the first time he’d ever thought about that, and it seemed to me that he put all his energies into not falling rather than walking the tightrope.”  Mrs. Wallenda added that her husband even went so far as to personally supervise the installation of the tightrope, making certain the guy wires were secure, “something he had never even thought of doing before” (Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders, the Strategies for Taking Charge (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), pp. 69, 70).  Wallenda’s loss of confidence portended and even contributed to his death, though his past performances gave him every reason to be confident.

Spiritually, no true Christian has to surrender to the “Wallenda factor” because our confidence rests not on our own powers but on God’s sure promises.

The writer’s charge to “not throw away your confidence” means not to cast away confident confession of Christ in the midst of opposition.  It’s a negative command. Do not throw it away this confidence. 

“Cast away” or throw away is the very opposite of holding fast (Heb. 3:6). The argument here is that this is no time to abandon the readers’ confidence since they previously carried a high level of confidence under persecution (Heb. 3:6; 4:16; 10:19). The implication is that, since they already had “confidence,” they should not abandon it (Heb. 3:14).

We saw it earlier in Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with confidence,” because we have a great high priest who died on the cross, who shed His blood for sinners like you and me, since He was raised from the dead, since He has ascended and is now seated at the right hand of Almighty God, “let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”  Let’s have that confidence.

Adam Clarke protests: “Do not throw it away…neither men nor devils can take it from you, and God will never deprive you of it if you continue faithful.  There is a reference here to cowardly soldiers, who throw away their shields, and run away from the battle.  This is your shield, your faith in Christ, which gives you the knowledge of salvation; keep it, and it will keep you.”

Discouraged by the perils and hardships of the wilderness, the forefathers of those to whom our letter was sent were moved with a spirit of apostasy when they asked, “Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Num. 14:3).   These Hebrew Christians of the first century were in danger of following this evil example (cf. 3:12) by “forsaking the God who made them” and “scoffing at the Rock of their salvation” (Dt 32:15).   To do this would be evidence that they had indeed “thrown away their confidence” and returned to the deceptive and impermanent material things of the present world which previously they had professed to “throw away.”  (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 432)

These believers were not to go back to where they had been as unbelievers—that is, to not fully understanding and depending upon the finished work of Christ.  These Hebrews were not to throw off the confidence they had in Christ.  Rather, they were to boldly proclaim their faith in the finished work of Christ.  They were to build upon their past faith and faithfulness.

The positive corollary (to “throwing away” one’s confidence) is to proclaim confidence even in the midst of opposition—like Peter and John before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:13) and Latimer before King Henry.

This exhortation to maintain their confidence in Christ will result in “great reward” (cf. v. 34 “a better possession and abiding one”).  As we said last week, that “great reward” ultimately is God himself.  There is no better reward than to know Him and have a deep and abiding relationship with Him.  That is our greatest joy (Psalm 16:11).

There is a great and rich reward in eternity for persevering in one’s faith during trials. This reward is not because we maintain our confidence; rather, it is the retaining of the confidence that allows us to receive God’s promises.  They must persevere in their faith to receive this reward.

Next, one’s confident response is to be followed by perseverance: “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised” (v. 36).  The exhortation of v. 35 is so that they “may receive what is promised.”

Endurance is sticking to something even when it gets hard and painful.  I can remember running cross country at what was then called Ozark Boys Camp.  On two Sunday track meets I had won the race, on the third week I lost.  On the fourth and final week I was running neck and neck with the guy who had beat me the week before.  My side was hurting and it was too painful, so I tripped on purpose, allowing him too great a distance to catch up.  I didn’t endure.  I gave up close to the finish line, but I didn’t win because it was too hard to continue running fast.

The prophet Jeremiah complained to the Lord about how dark the times were that he lived in. The wicked get away with everything.  What’s the deal?

God replied, Jeremiah 12:5 “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses?  If you fall down in a land of peace, how will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?”  If you think it’s tough now, just wait. It’s going to get worse.  You and I need endurance.

William Barclay writes: “Perseverance is one of the great unromantic virtues.  Most people can start well; almost everyone can be fine in spasms.  Most people have their good days.  Most men have their great moments.  To everyone it is sometimes given to mount up with wings as eagles; in the moment of the great effort everyone can run and not be weary; but the greatest gift of all is to walk and not to faint” (William Barclay, pp. 143-144).

The toughest and most discouraging trials are when we are called to obey God’s will when the fulfillment of His promise seems so far away.  This is why we need endurance.

These Hebrews must endure in keeping their full confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ, rather than retreating back to the Jewish system of sacrifices and priests.  This is God’s will for them—to remain believing in Jesus Christ.  This is God’s great desire for you and me as well.  Just as you put your faith in Christ at some point in your life—keep believing!  No matter how hard that path gets, stick with it.  Don’t abandon your confidence in Jesus Christ!

The result of continued confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ is that we will “receive what is promised” (v. 36c).  Receiving God’s promises is based on our faith, but it is also based upon our endurance in believing.

This exhortation is a good summary of the whole message of Hebrews.  It is what all the warning passages are about.

We understand that the grand key for perseverance is faith.  Knowing this, we are set up for the greatest exposition of the subject of faith found anywhere in Scripture–in chapter 11.  (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Hebrews, vol. 2, 56)

The key to successful perseverance is faith.  It is significant that in verses 37–39, as the preacher emphasizes the need of faith in order to persevere, he quotes from Habakkuk 2:3, 4—“For, ‘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.”

Every word in Habakkuk 2:4 is important, and the Lord quotes it three times in the New Testament just to bring out the fullness of the meaning.

• In Romans 1:17 Paul quotes this same passage from Habakkuk 2:4 with the emphasis on faith: “The just shall live by faith.”
• In Galatians 3:11 Paul quotes this passage from Habakkuk 2:4 with the emphasis on just: “The just shall live by faith.”
• Here in Hebrews 10:38 the emphasis is on live: “The just shall live by faith.”

Originally God gave this exhortation to the prophet Habakkuk as the prophet repeatedly complained about the advances of injustice and the suffering of the righteous, God’s bottom-line advice being that “the righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4).  “Live by faith, Habakkuk!”  Later on in Habakkuk’s writing, when the prophet had allowed this truth to sink in, he rose above his depression and complaint and sang this great song of faith: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17, 18).

Here in Hebrews, though the quotation from Habakkuk is taken from the Septuagint’s rearranged messianic rendering of the Hebrew text, the application is still the same— the righteous will live by faith.  The meaning here in Hebrews is this: (1) Jesus is returning soon—“The coming one will come and will not delay” (v. 37); (2) the saved will persevere by faith—“But my righteous one shall live by faith” (v. 38a); (3) the lost will shrink back—“And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him” (v. 38b).

We can persevere because Jesus is returning soon “in a very little while” (cf. Rev. 22:20).  So we need to keep walking by faith.  If we abandon that purpose and shrink back, we will not please God.  When Jesus returns all of God’s promises will be fulfilled.  He will fulfill the covenants with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David.  Jesus’ coming will fulfill everything that He promised for you.

Twice in verse 37 our author emphasizes the nearness of Christ’s return to fulfill His promises.  He says “yet a little while” and he “will not delay.”  That phrase is very expressive and emphatic. The author used a word which signifies “a little while”, and then for further emphasis added a particle meaning “very”, and this he still further intensified by repeating it; thus literally rendered, this clause reads: “For yet a very, very little while, and He that shall come will come.”

The righteous “shall live by faith.”  Faith is not only the instrumental cause of our salvation, but it is also the instrumental cause of our Christian life here and now.  Paul says in Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

If we don’t live by faith and access the power of God for our daily life, when trials and persecution come we will likely “shrink back” from full confidence in Jesus Christ.  “Shrinking back” is just another name for “throwing away [our] confidence.”  Again, it refers to the apostasy explained in verse 29.

Leon Morris says, “Paul is concerned with the way a man comes to be accepted by God; the author [of this epistle] is concerned with the importance of holding fast to one’s faith in the face of temptations to abandon it.”

There are two dangers in turning away from Jesus back to the Mosaic system.  First, God “has no pleasure in him.”  God is not pleased by sin, and especially this most heinous of sins—turning one’s back upon His precious Son whom God has offered to die in our place.  When someone does that, to say that God “has no pleasure in him” is a vast understatement.  In fact, the opposite is true—one remains an enemy of God.

The other consequence of turning away from Jesus Christ as the one sacrifice for sins is found in verse 39, those who shrink back “are destroyed.”  The word could also be translated “ruin” or “waste.”

Some believe this refers to eternal destruction in the Lake of Fire.  Others believe it refers to temporal punishment.  And some believe that it refers to the waste of turning back to the old ways of life.  Obviously, some of these possibilities are more serious than others, but none of them work in our favor.

As in our other warning passages, our author once again distinguishes between those who apostatize and those who remain faithful.  Verse 39.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls (Heb. 10:39)

He is saying, let God’s promises of future reward keep you from shrinking back, and thus you will preserve your soul.  This is not a reference to conversion. It refers to the preservation of the faithful believer until he receives his full reward (cf. 1 Pet. 2:9).  The “preserving of the soul” is equivalent to saving the life in James 5:20.

Last week we began this section of the book of Hebrews which encourages the Hebrews to look back at their past faithfulness and look forward to their reward to encourage them to continue in faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

That passage is Hebrews 10:32-34.

32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. 37 For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; 38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” 39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Not only had these Jewish Christians been persecuted themselves, they had also unashamedly supported other believers who had undergone persecution in the same way; they became “partners with those so treated.”

Here their spiritual athleticism leaps forth, because they transcended the normal tendency to be passive and actively joined in suffering together.  What gallantry and honor!  “I stand with my brothers and sisters here.  If you insult them, you insult me!”  Side-by-side, with arms locked, they chose to face persecution together.

They stood by them.  They embraced them in solidarity.  They didn’t turn and run away in fear but said, “We are here for those you are abusing.  We stand with them.  They are our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We are not afraid to declare ourselves partners with them.” 

Can you think of someone who is being publicly attacked today who might need you to stand with them and support them?

This word here in v. 34, “partners,” is the word we find normally translated “fellowship,” koinonia.  We talk about Christian “fellowship” today but usually mean no more than that we shared a meal together or hang out in a small group or enjoyed sitting next to another Christian in a church service like this one.  But for these people it went much deeper.  Their unity and sense of community displayed itself in their open and willing identification with those who suffered worst of all.

Community is not just a place for the suffering to find comfort but for the comfortable to find suffering.  Together we join Christ in his suffering, and as a result, as 2 Corinthians 1:4 says, “we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his great little book Life Together, pointed out: ““The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother.  He must suffer and endure the brother.  It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated.  The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross.  God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ.  But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found.  God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God.  In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them” (Life Together).

What we see, and like to see, is cure and change.  But what we do not see and do not want to see is care: the participation in the pain, the solidarity in the suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness.  And still, cure without care is as dehumanizing as a gift given with a cold heart” (Henri J. M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude (Ave Maria Press, 2008), pp. 35-36).

Jerry Bridges, in his book Trusting God, writes: “There are many elements that go into the total concept of fellowship, as it is described in the New Testament, but the sharing together in suffering is one of the most profitable.  It probably unites our hearts together in Christ more than any other aspect of fellowship.”  Most of us aren’t out looking for suffering, but we can deeply appreciate the fellowship we enjoy when we share it with others.

We enjoy the deepest fellowship with Jesus Christ as we join him in the “fellowship of his sufferings” (Philippians 3:10).  We enjoy our deepest fellowship with one another as we go through suffering together.

Next, in verse 34, he says, “you had compassion on those in prison.”  That is, they literally had a “fellow-feeling” for or with those in prison. The same word is used in 4:15 of Christ’s sympathy for us as our high priest!  They lived out the later exhortation in Hebrews to “remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them” (13:3). 

Even more, this was not imagined sympathy—it was real, because they visited their comrades in prison.

In the world of the first century the lot of prisoners was difficult. Prisoners were to be punished, not pampered.  Little provision was made for them, and they were dependent on friends for their supplies [including food].  Without them, they would likely starve.  For Christians in the early church, visiting prisoners was a meritorious act (Matt 25:36).  But there was some risk, in fact it could be dangerous, for the visitors became identified with the visited.  However, the readers of the epistle had not shrunk from this.  It is not pleasant to endure ignominy, and it is not pleasant to be lumped with the ignominious.  They had endured both.

It’s entirely likely that those arrested had been severely beaten and were left untended and hurting.  In any case, the rest of the Christians had to make a decision: Do we keep our mouths shut and lock our doors and say and do nothing?  Or do we go to our Christian friends and provide the help they need and in doing so very likely expose ourselves to the same mistreatment they’ve suffered?  Let’s not forget, we’ve got families too.  What will become of our homes and possessions and our jobs and our reputation if we step out to help them?

Evidently, when the light of God’s grace shone in their hearts to give them the knowledge of Jesus Christ, among the many things that they experienced was a transformation from being selfish and self-protective to being compassionate!  They were so burdened by the burdens of their fellow believers that they simply couldn’t remain silent or keep still.  The compassion that Jesus himself displayed toward the sick and hurting and abused and the outcasts of his day came alive in their hearts as well. 

What some might consider reckless and irresponsible behavior on their part, the Bible calls compassion!

And they did it willingly—and in doing so some visited Christ who said, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink . . . I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” (Matthew 25:35, 36).

In all of this they had done well, but most amazingly to me is the next statement: “. . . and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one” (v. 34b).  Apparently their willingness to stand in solidarity with Christians who were being persecuted is that they experienced economic persecution as well.

Perhaps they burned their homes or broke out their windows and stole their furniture.  Or it might refer to official fines.  Whatever it was, showing sympathy with their suffering brothers and sisters cost them their possessions.

You can’t tell from the word whether it’s official confiscation of property, or whether it’s unofficial vandalism.  One way or the other, their property was ruined and taken.

They didn’t just grimly endure the loss of their property; they accepted it joyfully!  Many modern Christians would rage at such unfair treatment and file a lawsuit to recover what they lost, plus damages for emotional suffering!  But these new believers had such profound joy in knowing Christ that they sang the doxology as the mob hauled off their belongings and leveled their houses.

Now, imagine your small group.  Half of a small group went to jail, and the other half had a meeting and prayed, and they made decisions about costly love.  They went and identified with the prisoners, and while they were gone people wrote, “Christians get out!” all over their houses and took their furniture and burned it in the streets.  And you gather your small group in a circle and sing a song of joy that you had been counted worthy of such abuse for the sake of the Name (Acts 5:41).  The author of Hebrews says that is how they responded: “You joyfully accepted the seizure of your property knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one.”

Now, the human tendency is to hold on as hard as we can to what we have and we only let go of it kicking and screaming.

We may believe that the way to really enjoy the good things in life is to hold onto to them as hard as we could for as long as we can.

R. Kent Hughes relates this story:

I once came across an ad that appealed to the desire of many to keep their household pets, which unfortunately do not have a lengthy life expectancy.  The advertisement was for freeze-drying!  According to the ad, most people who have their pets freeze-dried do so because they want to “keep their pets around a little longer.”  The process takes several months, and the pet will remain natural-looking for up to twenty years after being freeze-dried.  The price for this service ranges from $400 for a small pet up to $1,400 for a pet the size of a golden retriever (“Freeze-dried Pets Article Legitimate,” The Bloomington Indiana Herald-Telephone (December 26, 1985).  So, if your wish is to hang on to everything—even your dead dog—here’s your chance!

But there is a better way, a way that will lead to greater joy, and that is to ‘joyfully accept[ed] the plundering of your property.”

They had also been willing to suffer material loss because they looked forward to a better inheritance in the future (cf. Luke 21:19).  Moreover, they had done this joyfully, not grudgingly.

You accepted it “with joy” (joyfully), the writer says.  The preposition “with” denotes the attendant circumstances of something that is taking place.  Here that loss of possessions is “with” the feeling of excitement, filled with “joy” (chara).  The word “accepted” has the idea of welcoming something, of treating it like a welcome guest, or eagerly receiving someone.  It expresses the idea of expectant waiting where a person is ready and willing to receive all that is hoped for.

“Thankfully, joy is an all-season response to life. Even in the dark times, sorrow enlarges the capacity of the heart for joy. Like a diamond against black velvet, true spiritual joy shines brightest against the darkness of trials, tragedies and testing” (1 and 2 Thessalonians, Christian Focus Publications, 1999, p. 54).

“The eternal inheritance laid up for them was so real in their eyes that they could lightheartedly bid farewell to material possessions which were short-lived in any case.  This attitude of mind is precisely that ‘faith’ of which our author goes on to speak” (F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 270).

Though losing their possessions they found themselves exhilarated by the loss!  Why?  Because they knew they “had a better possession and an abiding one.”  They believed Jesus’ words, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . .” (Matthew 6:19, 20). They were “seek[ing] the city that is to come” (13:14)—“the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22).

They made it through the time of persecution by keeping a heavenly perspective, an eternal perspective.  The writer to the Hebrews’ point is clear: you can make it through this present time of discouragement also.

There are a number of passages in Scripture that command us to have joy in the face of trials and troubles and persecution, and in every case it is based upon something that we know.  There is always a good reason.  All of these passages have to do with the trials or persecution we go through and all of them command us to rejoice and all of them give us a great reason to rejoice.

Look at these passages.  First is James 1:2-4.

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

We are to count it “all joy,” or “pure joy” whenever we meet trials and verse 3 gives us the reason we can rejoice in our trials, and that is “because you know” something, you know “that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” and when we continue to be steadfast, it produces spiritual maturity.

Paul, in Romans 5 says something very similar.  In the midst of five great benefits of being justified by faith, Paul says…

3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

We not only rejoice in our “hope of glory” in the future, being transformed into Christlikeness, but now “we rejoice in our sufferings,” and why?  Because we know “that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”  Again, we rejoice in our sufferings because through them God brings about Christlike character.

Peter chimes in as well.  In 1 Peter 1 he looks back upon his own experiences with trials, likely reflecting back upon the time that he denied his Lord three times after claiming that he would stand up for Christ.  He says…

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith–more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire–may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

He doesn’t use the word “know,” but he does reveal that the purpose of trials is “so that the tested genuineness of your faith….may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  In other words, when we go through the testing of our faith through trials, the end result is reward in the presence of Christ.

That is what Jesus focused upon when he told His disciples in Matthew 5:10-12.

10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

The word “blessed” means to be in a state of utmost happiness and this can be experienced even in persecution.  Thus, Jesus tells them to “rejoice and be glad” (and that word “be glad” has the idea of jumping for joy).  And why?  Because “your reward is great in heaven.”

Like Peter, Jesus focused on the future benefits of suffering now—it results in greater rewards in heaven.

Paul also addresses this in Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 4 when he says “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).  As we look at our current sufferings, no matter how painful and prolonged they may seem, they are “not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”  Do the math, Paul says.  Whatever you lose now we result in far greater gain in glory.

In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul says it like this.  “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,” (2 Cor. 4:17).

Christ also would endured the shame and pain of the cross “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb. 12:2).  He endured the present pain by looking forward to future reward.  In Hebrews 11, Moses will do the same.  I love these verses.

25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

And now look back at Hebrews 10:34.

When you know that you have a better and a lasting possession, you are not paralyzed by loss.  Now that’s not nearly strong enough is it?  When you know that you have a better possession and one that lasts forever, you’re not paralyzed by anger when you lose something.  That’s not nearly strong enough either, because it’s not just that they weren’t paralyzed, (and I didn’t write it, Christian hedonist that I am, God wrote it) it says they rejoiced.  Evidently, there must be a possession which is so much better and long lasting that if you have it, and you lose something in the name of it, that’s okay.

The key to indomitable joy that produces love and good works that share the loss of property others have experienced is “knowing that you have for yourself a better possession and an abiding one.”  When you know that you have a better and a lasting possession, you are not paralyzed by loss.  If that better possession is great enough, you will even be able to rejoice in loss.

So what is this possession?  Well, it’s everything the book of Hebrews is about.  This book is written to help believers love their treasure, their reward, so deeply that this lifestyle emerges.  From the end of Chapter 10, everything left in this letter is about living by faith by falling in love with this possession.

What is it? Well, it’s the triumph over death (2:15).  It’s the final resting for the saints (4:9).  It’s the subduing of all of our enemies that Christ accomplished (10:13).  It’s the perfection we enjoy by the one sacrifice, Jesus Christ, and it’s the ultimate goal of drawing near to God and having him be our God forever.  That’s the new covenant.  “I will be among them.  They will be my people.  I will be their God forever.”  That’s our treasure, our possession.  God, our God, our portion, our Savior, our Refuge, our hope, our King.  

A better possession and an abiding one is not a thing.  Don’t ever try to get your hope from a thing in heaven, or from a gift instead of the giver.  Our true possession is fellowship with God.  It’s being accepted by God and being loved by God and being embraced by the Father.  And, it’s better.  Don’t miss those two words.  Don’t fly over words when you read the Bible.  Stop and meditate. T he two words I’m pointing you to are “better” and “abiding.”  We have a better possession, verse 34, a better possession and an abiding one.

I love to link that up with Psalm 16:11.  At the end of the Psalm it says, “Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness of joy.”  Mark the word fullness.  “At thy right hand are pleasures forever.”  That’s lasting.  If you take those two words, fullness and forever, and compare them with verse 34, you see how they correspond: We have a better possession and an abiding one.  Better corresponds to fullness and abiding corresponds to forever.  What’s the reward?  It’s God.  “In thy presence is fullness of joy.  At thy right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-present-power-of-a-future-possession)

For a Jew to confess the faith of Christ Crucified brought on him the loathing and disgrace of his compatriots, the ruination of his business, and even expulsion from the family circle. This would particularly be the case in the Jewish homeland, and it goes a long way toward explaining the extreme poverty of the Christian community in Jerusalem, which caused Paul to give such prominence to the collection of relief funds among the Gentile churches.  (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 427)

So our author is encouraging his readers to stay faithful, to endure sufferings.  They had done it until know, they have need of continued endurance.

We may have begun well and now want to end well. If so, part of the secret is to remember well.

We have been looking at the rather severe warning passage in Hebrews 10:26-31 over the last few weeks.  We’ve seen that apostasy is quite possible among those who have been attached to the church and have felt some spiritual experiences and adopted some Christian practices, yet they have ultimately “spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29) and therefore they will experience God’s just punishment.

The writer concluded this warning by reminding his readers of their former faithfulness, when they were being tempted, in order to encourage them to endure their present and future tests (cf. 4:12-16; 6:9-20).  Here is what he wrote:

32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. 37 For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; 38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” 39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

“The juxtaposition of 10:26-31 and 32-35 suggests that it may have been the experience of suffering, abuse, and loss in the world that motivated the desertion of the community acknowledged in v. 25 and a general tendency to avoid contact with outsiders observed elsewhere in Hebrews (see … 5:11-14)” (William Lane, Hebrews 9—13, p. 297).

So in this passage the writer of Hebrews first calls them to remember past faithfulness (vv. 32-34) and then he encourages them “do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.”  He encourages them to endure.

Hughes notes with reference to this passage, “We may have begun well and now want to end well. If so, part of the secret is to remember well” (R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews: An Anchor for the Soul, 2 vols. (Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), 2:54).

We might identify the big idea of this passage like this: To have faith that endures trials, recall how God worked for you in the past, focus on doing His will in the present, and remember to trust His promises in the future.  Or, to put it another way: By pointing the community to the past as well as to the future, the writer seeks to strengthen their Christian resolve for the present.

This passage may seem somewhat foreign to us and irrelevant to our situation.  After all, we are probably not experiencing persecution like that expressed in this passage.  And then, of course, there is the prosperity gospel teaching that we can claim health and freedom and a good life now so that we don’t have to experience such bad things.

But we do need this encouragement.  Life can be tough.  There are many things that can discourage us from continuing on with Jesus Christ.  Our country does not look with favor upon Christians practicing their faith as it had in the past.  Sometimes our families are against our commitment to live for Jesus Christ.  Our culture paints Christianity as an antiquated, dogmatic, homophobic, anti-science propaganda that we are better living without.  So we have need of endurance.  We need to remember that there will be “a great reward” for us in the future if we hold on and don’t shrink back.

Our writer takes his readers back to the “former days…after you were enlightened.”  This word “enlightened” is the same word used back in Hebrews 6:4.  We said there that this experience of being enlightened is a part of the pre-Christian experience when the Holy Spirit begins to open one’s eyes to spiritual truth.  However, we noted there that although this is the experience of every Christian—we must have our eyes opened (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4-6)—it does not necessarily result in salvation, for those who experienced this back in Hebrews 6:4 ended up turning away from Christ and could no longer experience repentance.

2 Corinthians 4:6 says

“God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 

Before God opened our eyes, we did not even see our need for the Savior.  We mistakenly thought that we were good enough to get into heaven by our own righteousness.  We had no idea of how terrible our sins were or of how holy God is.  We did not appreciate the fact that the Son of God gave Himself on the cross to pay our debt of sin.  But then, while we were yet in such darkness, God graciously opened our eyes.  With the converted slave trader, John Newton, we could sing, “I once was blind, but now I see!”

This had happened to the recipients of this epistle—their eyes had been opened and they saw the sufficiency and supremacy and sweetness of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and believed.

So the first thing that happened is that God’s loving light invaded their darkened hearts and minds and gave them sight to see the beauty and majesty of the glory of God revealed in Jesus. When God’s grace takes hold of us, the lights go on!

John Piper points out that…

But then the New Testament talks about how becoming a Christian means we also shine like lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse world (Philippians 2:15).  We don’t just see the light of God’s glory more clearly, we begin to reflect it.  God shines into us and we shine out to the world.

So I take Hebrews 10:32 to point to these two things.  These Christians had come to see the light of the gospel of the glory of God as true and infinitely valuable; and they had then begun to shine in the world as a witness to this truth and value. The first experience set them free from the world and the second made them stand out from the world.

Before we work through the text, one other word of introduction may be helpful. Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matt. 13:3-23; Mark 4:3-20; Luke 8:5-15) serves as a useful backdrop to our text.  Jesus described the seed of the Word as sown on four types of soil.  Some fell beside the road, where the birds ate it, so that it never took root and sprouted.  This represents unbelievers who hear the gospel, but do not understand or believe it.  Other seed fell on the rocky ground, where there was no depth of soil. It quickly sprang up, but it had no roots, and so it withered.  This represents those who hear the Word and immediately receive it with joy.  But when affliction or persecution arises, they quickly fall away.

The third soil is infested with thorns.  The seed sprouts, but the thorns, representing worries, riches, and pleasures of this life (Luke 8:14), choke out the word so that it does not bring forth any fruit.  The fourth type is good soil, representing those who hear, understand, and accept the Word, and bear fruit with perseverance (Luke 8:15).

In my understanding, only the fourth type of soil represents true believers who “have faith to the preserving of the soul” (Heb. 10:39).  The rocky soil and the thorny soil both make a profession of faith for a while but eventually, they “shrink back to destruction.”  In other words, genuine saving faith endures trials and bears fruit.  The amount of fruit will vary (“some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty,” Matt. 13:23), but there will be observable evidence of a transformed heart.  True believers may fail under pressure, as Peter did when he denied Jesus.  Every believer struggles daily against sin, not always victoriously.  But if God has changed the heart and if His saving life is “in the vine,” the person will repent, endure in faith, and bear fruit unto eternal life. (https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-31-enduring-faith-hebrews-1032-39)

The apostates had also been enlightened, but their lack of endurance revealed that their hearts had not been changed.  They did not ever truly put their trust in Jesus Christ, turning their backs on their own efforts and fully relying upon His work in their behalf.

So our author is drawing their minds back to the days just after they had been enlightened and he reminds them that they had “endured a hard struggle with sufferings.”  Every part of that sentence hurts.  Their conversion had resulted in hard times.  This is what makes the “joy” of verse 34 so amazing.

Phillips notes, “the author does not ‘recall’ his readers’ attention to the ‘good old days’ where faith seemed easy.  It is not the times when things go well that really define our Christian lives. The really significant times, the periods that make up the highlights of our own histories, are those of trial and difficulty and danger” (Richard D. Phillips, Hebrews: Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2006), 380).

In the former days, after the Hebrew Christians started to see the glory of Christ and to shine with the glory of Christ, they also started to suffer for Christ.  That is the paradox of the Christian life—the more faithful we are to Jesus Christ, the more we will suffer hardship.

This was a challenge to recall how they had marvelously stood unmoved some fifteen years earlier during the persecution under the Roman Emperor Claudius in A.D. 49.  A famous quotation from the historian Suetonius indicates the character of the Claudian persecution: “There were riots in the Jewish quarter at the instigation of Chrestus.  As a result, Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome” (Life of the Deified Claudius, 25.4).  Historians believe “Chrestus” is a reference to Christ and that the riots and expulsion occurred when Jewish Christians were banished from the synagogue by the Jewish establishment.  No one had been killed (cf. 12:4), but it was nevertheless a wrenching time of humiliation and abuse.

They had endured a “hard struggle.”  Our word “athletic” comes from the Greek word translated “struggle.”  It was like a hard-fought athletic contest, with Satan vying for their souls.  They were not passive, but engaged in this suffering, seeing it as a contest for God’s glory.

The persecution was like a hard-fought athletic contest viewed by a partisan crowd.  There was nothing passive in their display.  In fact, they showed superb spiritual athleticism as they stood their ground!  (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Hebrews, vol. 2, 52)

The word translated “endured” is a reference to war and means “to stand one’s ground” or “to remain on the battlefield” instead of running away in cowardice.  In an athletic contest, it involved remaining in the fight or the race, even though every fiber of your body is screaming, “give up.”

Such athleticism is a beautiful thing in the eyes of God and the church—as it was, for example, in the life of Hugh Latimer, the great English Reformer.  On one notable occasion Latimer preached before Henry VIII and offended Henry with his boldness.  So, Latimer was commanded to preach the following weekend and make an apology.  On that following Sunday, after reading the text, he addressed himself as he began to preach:

Hugh Latimer, dost thou know before whom thou art this day to speak?  To the high and mighty monarch, the king’s most excellent majesty, who can take away thy life if thou offendest; therefore, take heed that thou speakest not a word that may displease; but then consider well, Hugh, dost thou not know from whence thou comest; upon whose message thou art sent?  Even by the great and mighty God! who is all-present, and who beholdeth all thy ways, and who is able to cast thy soul into hell!  Therefore, take care that thou deliverest thy message faithfully.

He then gave Henry the same sermon he had preached the week before—only with more energy!  Latimer was superb!  And his memory is a great treasure of the Church.

Here our writer is calling for a similar remembrance of those storied days when the little church had been magnificent—“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.”

It is encouraging to note the intensity and repetition of the conflict. It is of great intensity.  The word is polus meaning “much, great, strong, severe, hard, deep, profound.”  They were enduring an intense profound struggle with sufferings (pathema).

That “suffering” was a struggle that came many different ways.  They had been “publicly exposed to reproach and affliction.”  They were “partners with those so treated” – including the writer to the Hebrews himself (“you had compassion those in prison”).  They also had faced economic persecution (the “plundering of your property”).  But the point is that they had faced these things, and had endured them.  They could take a look at their past endurance, and be encouraged to keep standing strong in the future.

The story line in the book of Acts demonstrates the early Christians were exposed to open shame, persecution and derision (Acts 4:15-18; 5:17-18, 40-41; 8:1; 9:1-2; 12:1-5; 13:50; 14:19; 16:19-24, 37-39; 17:5-8, 13; 18:2; 19:9, 23ff; 21:27-39; 28:16-17, 30).  Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 8 is an excellent example of this kind of persecution.  James the brother of John was murdered by King Herod (Acts 12:1-2).

When he says that they were sometimes “publicly exposed to reproach and affliction,” he uses the theatorizo, from which we get “theater.”  This uses the same ancient Greek word as in 1 Corinthians 4:9 “God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.”  The idea is to be made theater for a watching world.  They were ridiculed and taunted as a theatre of the absurd.

This may be the primary way we face persecution in the U. S. today—public ridicule.  This happens through Hollywood and social media quite often.

The word “reproach” pertains to one’s character.  They slandered you.  They dragged your name through the mud.  They accused you of horrific sins that you have not committed. They ridiculed you for your faith.  This is the same word he will use in 13:13 to describe the “reproach” that Jesus himself endured.  It’s our author’s way of saying that these believers had so identified with Jesus that they endured the same sort of public humiliation to which he was exposed. 

Along with that, the “affliction” they endured was of the nature of being squeezed and pressured.  The word “affliction” pertains more to maltreatment of one’s body.  They beat you, they deprived you of shelter and food, and then they threw you into prison without justifiable cause.  Persecution was one thing, but sardonic, smiling, rung-dropping insults made it even more devastating.

Sam Storms notes:

Evidently the non-Christian world surrounding them saw this light in their lives and hated it and did everything they could to snuff it out.  Jesus told us to expect this to happen.  In the Sermon on the Mount, and virtually in the same breath, Jesus said, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16), but he also declared, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:11).  So not everyone gives glory to the Father when they see Christians shining. 

We don’t know what provoked this persecution.  It may be that these Christians simply stopped engaging in the sinful activities that formerly characterized their lives.  They stood out in a crowd and said No, and this offended those with whom they used to run wild.  Or perhaps their vocal testimony to the glory of God as revealed in Jesus and his atoning sacrifice was deemed “politically incorrect” and the civil authorities took action to silence them.

This was just part of the suffering they were facing.

We have been looking at the rather severe warning passage in Hebrews 10:26-31 over the last few weeks.  We’ve seen that apostasy is quite possible among those who have been attached to the church and have felt some spiritual experiences and adopted some Christian practices, yet they have ultimately “spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29) and therefore they will experience God’s just punishment.

The writer concluded this warning by reminding his readers of their former faithfulness, when they were being tempted, in order to encourage them to endure their present and future tests (cf. 4:12-16; 6:9-20).  Here is what he wrote:

32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. 37 For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; 38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” 39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

“The juxtaposition of 10:26-31 and 32-35 suggests that it may have been the experience of suffering, abuse, and loss in the world that motivated the desertion of the community acknowledged in v. 25 and a general tendency to avoid contact with outsiders observed elsewhere in Hebrews (see … 5:11-14)” (William Lane, Hebrews 9—13, p. 297).

So in this passage the writer of Hebrews first calls them to remember past faithfulness (vv. 32-34) and then he encourages them “do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.”  He encourages them to endure.

Hughes notes with reference to this passage, “We may have begun well and now want to end well. If so, part of the secret is to remember well” (R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews: An Anchor for the Soul, 2 vols. (Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), 2:54).

We might identify the big idea of this passage like this: To have faith that endures trials, recall how God worked for you in the past, focus on doing His will in the present, and remember to trust His promises in the future.  Or, to put it another way: By pointing the community to the past as well as to the future, the writer seeks to strengthen their Christian resolve for the present.

This passage may seem somewhat foreign to us and irrelevant to our situation.  After all, we are probably not experiencing persecution like that expressed in this passage.  And then, of course, there is the prosperity gospel teaching that we can claim health and freedom and a good life now so that we don’t have to experience such bad things.

But we do need this encouragement.  Life can be tough.  There are many things that can discourage us from continuing on with Jesus Christ.  Our country does not look with favor upon Christians practicing their faith as it had in the past.  Sometimes our families are against our commitment to live for Jesus Christ.  Our culture paints Christianity as an antiquated, dogmatic, homophobic, anti-science propaganda that we are better living without.  So we have need of endurance.  We need to remember that there will be “a great reward” for us in the future if we hold on and don’t shrink back.

Our writer takes his readers back to the “former days…after you were enlightened.”  This word “enlightened” is the same word used back in Hebrews 6:4.  We said there that this experience of being enlightened is a part of the pre-Christian experience when the Holy Spirit begins to open one’s eyes to spiritual truth.  However, we noted there that although this is the experience of every Christian—we must have our eyes opened (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4-6)—it does not necessarily result in salvation, for those who experienced this back in Hebrews 6:4 ended up turning away from Christ and could no longer experience repentance.

2 Corinthians 4:6 says

“God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 

Before God opened our eyes, we did not even see our need for the Savior.  We mistakenly thought that we were good enough to get into heaven by our own righteousness.  We had no idea of how terrible our sins were or of how holy God is.  We did not appreciate the fact that the Son of God gave Himself on the cross to pay our debt of sin.  But then, while we were yet in such darkness, God graciously opened our eyes.  With the converted slave trader, John Newton, we could sing, “I once was blind, but now I see!”

This had happened to the recipients of this epistle—their eyes had been opened and they saw the sufficiency and supremacy and sweetness of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and believed.

So the first thing that happened is that God’s loving light invaded their darkened hearts and minds and gave them sight to see the beauty and majesty of the glory of God revealed in Jesus. When God’s grace takes hold of us, the lights go on!

John Piper points out that…

But then the New Testament talks about how becoming a Christian means we also shine like lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse world (Philippians 2:15).  We don’t just see the light of God’s glory more clearly, we begin to reflect it.  God shines into us and we shine out to the world.

So I take Hebrews 10:32 to point to these two things.  These Christians had come to see the light of the gospel of the glory of God as true and infinitely valuable; and they had then begun to shine in the world as a witness to this truth and value. The first experience set them free from the world and the second made them stand out from the world.

Before we work through the text, one other word of introduction may be helpful. Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matt. 13:3-23; Mark 4:3-20; Luke 8:5-15) serves as a useful backdrop to our text.  Jesus described the seed of the Word as sown on four types of soil.  Some fell beside the road, where the birds ate it, so that it never took root and sprouted.  This represents unbelievers who hear the gospel, but do not understand or believe it.  Other seed fell on the rocky ground, where there was no depth of soil. It quickly sprang up, but it had no roots, and so it withered.  This represents those who hear the Word and immediately receive it with joy.  But when affliction or persecution arises, they quickly fall away.

The third soil is infested with thorns.  The seed sprouts, but the thorns, representing worries, riches, and pleasures of this life (Luke 8:14), choke out the word so that it does not bring forth any fruit.  The fourth type is good soil, representing those who hear, understand, and accept the Word, and bear fruit with perseverance (Luke 8:15).

In my understanding, only the fourth type of soil represents true believers who “have faith to the preserving of the soul” (Heb. 10:39).  The rocky soil and the thorny soil both make a profession of faith for a while but eventually, they “shrink back to destruction.”  In other words, genuine saving faith endures trials and bears fruit.  The amount of fruit will vary (“some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty,” Matt. 13:23), but there will be observable evidence of a transformed heart.  True believers may fail under pressure, as Peter did when he denied Jesus.  Every believer struggles daily against sin, not always victoriously.  But if God has changed the heart and if His saving life is “in the vine,” the person will repent, endure in faith, and bear fruit unto eternal life. (https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-31-enduring-faith-hebrews-1032-39)

The apostates had also been enlightened, but their lack of endurance revealed that their hearts had not been changed.  They did not ever truly put their trust in Jesus Christ, turning their backs on their own efforts and fully relying upon His work in their behalf.

So our author is drawing their minds back to the days just after they had been enlightened and he reminds them that they had “endured a hard struggle with sufferings.”  Every part of that sentence hurts.  Their conversion had resulted in hard times.  This is what makes the “joy” of verse 34 so amazing.

Phillips notes, “the author does not ‘recall’ his readers’ attention to the ‘good old days’ where faith seemed easy.  It is not the times when things go well that really define our Christian lives. The really significant times, the periods that make up the highlights of our own histories, are those of trial and difficulty and danger” (Richard D. Phillips, Hebrews: Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2006), 380).

In the former days, after the Hebrew Christians started to see the glory of Christ and to shine with the glory of Christ, they also started to suffer for Christ.  That is the paradox of the Christian life—the more faithful we are to Jesus Christ, the more we will suffer hardship.

This was a challenge to recall how they had marvelously stood unmoved some fifteen years earlier during the persecution under the Roman Emperor Claudius in A.D. 49.  A famous quotation from the historian Suetonius indicates the character of the Claudian persecution: “There were riots in the Jewish quarter at the instigation of Chrestus.  As a result, Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome” (Life of the Deified Claudius, 25.4).  Historians believe “Chrestus” is a reference to Christ and that the riots and expulsion occurred when Jewish Christians were banished from the synagogue by the Jewish establishment.  No one had been killed (cf. 12:4), but it was nevertheless a wrenching time of humiliation and abuse.

They had endured a “hard struggle.”  Our word “athletic” comes from the Greek word translated “struggle.”  It was like a hard-fought athletic contest, with Satan vying for their souls.  They were not passive, but engaged in this suffering, seeing it as a contest for God’s glory.

The persecution was like a hard-fought athletic contest viewed by a partisan crowd.  There was nothing passive in their display.  In fact, they showed superb spiritual athleticism as they stood their ground!  (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Hebrews, vol. 2, 52)

The word translated “endured” is a reference to war and means “to stand one’s ground” or “to remain on the battlefield” instead of running away in cowardice.  In an athletic contest, it involved remaining in the fight or the race, even though every fiber of your body is screaming, “give up.”

Such athleticism is a beautiful thing in the eyes of God and the church—as it was, for example, in the life of Hugh Latimer, the great English Reformer.  On one notable occasion Latimer preached before Henry VIII and offended Henry with his boldness.  So, Latimer was commanded to preach the following weekend and make an apology.  On that following Sunday, after reading the text, he addressed himself as he began to preach:

Hugh Latimer, dost thou know before whom thou art this day to speak?  To the high and mighty monarch, the king’s most excellent majesty, who can take away thy life if thou offendest; therefore, take heed that thou speakest not a word that may displease; but then consider well, Hugh, dost thou not know from whence thou comest; upon whose message thou art sent?  Even by the great and mighty God! who is all-present, and who beholdeth all thy ways, and who is able to cast thy soul into hell!  Therefore, take care that thou deliverest thy message faithfully.

He then gave Henry the same sermon he had preached the week before—only with more energy!  Latimer was superb!  And his memory is a great treasure of the Church.

Here our writer is calling for a similar remembrance of those storied days when the little church had been magnificent—“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.”

It is encouraging to note the intensity and repetition of the conflict. It is of great intensity.  The word is polus meaning “much, great, strong, severe, hard, deep, profound.”  They were enduring an intense profound struggle with sufferings (pathema).

That “suffering” was a struggle that came many different ways.  They had been “publicly exposed to reproach and affliction.”  They were “partners with those so treated” – including the writer to the Hebrews himself (“you had compassion those in prison”).  They also had faced economic persecution (the “plundering of your property”).  But the point is that they had faced these things, and had endured them.  They could take a look at their past endurance, and be encouraged to keep standing strong in the future.

The story line in the book of Acts demonstrates the early Christians were exposed to open shame, persecution and derision (Acts 4:15-18; 5:17-18, 40-41; 8:1; 9:1-2; 12:1-5; 13:50; 14:19; 16:19-24, 37-39; 17:5-8, 13; 18:2; 19:9, 23ff; 21:27-39; 28:16-17, 30).  Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 8 is an excellent example of this kind of persecution.  James the brother of John was murdered by King Herod (Acts 12:1-2).

When he says that they were sometimes “publicly exposed to reproach and affliction,” he uses the theatorizo, from which we get “theater.”  This uses the same ancient Greek word as in 1 Corinthians 4:9 “God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.”  The idea is to be made theater for a watching world.  They were ridiculed and taunted as a theatre of the absurd.

This may be the primary way we face persecution in the U. S. today—public ridicule.  This happens through Hollywood and social media quite often.

The word “reproach” pertains to one’s character.  They slandered you.  They dragged your name through the mud.  They accused you of horrific sins that you have not committed. They ridiculed you for your faith.  This is the same word he will use in 13:13 to describe the “reproach” that Jesus himself endured.  It’s our author’s way of saying that these believers had so identified with Jesus that they endured the same sort of public humiliation to which he was exposed. 

Along with that, the “affliction” they endured was of the nature of being squeezed and pressured.  The word “affliction” pertains more to maltreatment of one’s body.  They beat you, they deprived you of shelter and food, and then they threw you into prison without justifiable cause.  Persecution was one thing, but sardonic, smiling, rung-dropping insults made it even more devastating.

Sam Storms notes:

Evidently the non-Christian world surrounding them saw this light in their lives and hated it and did everything they could to snuff it out.  Jesus told us to expect this to happen.  In the Sermon on the Mount, and virtually in the same breath, Jesus said, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16), but he also declared, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:11).  So not everyone gives glory to the Father when they see Christians shining. 

We don’t know what provoked this persecution.  It may be that these Christians simply stopped engaging in the sinful activities that formerly characterized their lives.  They stood out in a crowd and said No, and this offended those with whom they used to run wild.  Or perhaps their vocal testimony to the glory of God as revealed in Jesus and his atoning sacrifice was deemed “politically incorrect” and the civil authorities took action to silence them.

This was just part of the suffering they were facing.

Over the last two weeks we’ve been looking at the warning passage in Hebrews 10:26-31.  It is indeed a frightening warning.  We’ve noticed that this is a warning to an apostate, one who (1) willfully and (2) consistently (3) reject Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for sins, although (4) one has been exposed to the truth and convicted by the Spirit (vv. 26, 29).

This comes from Hebrews 10:26-31

26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

In the process of going through this passage we have asked and answered several questions:

First, who is the apostate?

Second, what is his or her doom?

Third, why is this doom so severe?

Finally, today, how can the apostate be certain of such doom?

We saw that an apostate is not a normal sinner, but one who has been exposed to the gospel, likely more than once, and likely even has experienced Christian fellowship and the ordinances and gospel preaching for awhile, but yet they have turned their backs on Jesus Christ, returning to the Old Covenant sacrificial system, relying on their own works and the sacrifices of bulls and goats.

We saw that the doom itself was a “fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.”  Rejecting Christ makes us enemies of God and as enemies we will face judgment.

This doom is so severe because we have received the New Covenant person of Jesus Christ, the New Covenant gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and the work of the Spirit, yet with all that we have turned our backs on Jesus Christ.  Old Testament apostasy received the death penalty, while New Testament apostasy receives eternal death, a much more terrifying prospect.

So, today we are going to look at what our author says about the certainty of that doom.

There are those who deny eternal damnation.  Progressive Christianity, led by people like Brian McClaren and Rob Bell, deny the very existence of hell or claim that the real hell is life here on earth, when life involves suffering.  Others want to say that we are annihilated soon after going to the lake of fire.  But Jesus emphasizes the “forever” aspect of eternal judgment (Mark 9:43-48; Matthew 25:41, 46), which we also see in Hebrews 6:2.

That certainty is found in vv. 30-31.

30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Just as God is faithful to keep His promise to save, so He is faithful to keep His promise of judgment.

In verse 30, in order to drive home the terror of judgment, the author quotes loosely from the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:35, 36—“For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people’” (cf. Romans 12:19).  The phrases appear to be proverbial and were undoubtedly understood by everyone in the church.  Clearly, judgment is inevitable, and it is impartial. There will be equal justice for all.

In the gallery of Antoine Wiertz in Brussels, there is a collection of the most astounding and overpowering paintings—most of them exposing the brutality and horrors of war and the cruelty of conquerors, but some of them heralding the Empire of Peace and the triumph of Christ.

Walking down the hall where these awesome paintings hang, one is suddenly brought to a halt by a great painting entitled A Scene in Hell.  With folded arms and familiar cocked hat on his head, there stands the figure of a man.  There is no name given, but there is no need, for he is recognized as the Little Corporal from Corsica.  On his shadowed face there is a look of astonishment, with just a trace of dread and fear, as he beholds what is all around him.  By the light of the flames of Hell burning all about him, you can see behind him the ranks of the slain in battle.  Little children stretch out clenched fists at the emperor.  Mothers, with agony on their countenances, surround him, holding up the bleeding, amputated arms and legs of the slaughtered.  On the faces of the children, the wives, and the mothers are depicted rage, horror, hate, and infinite pain and sorrow.  The scene is macabre, terrible, horrible!  Yes, and that is just what Wiertz meant it to be, for it is Napoleon in Hell!  The artist’s moral imagination has tried to picture Napoleon with his just deserts, an equitable punishment for a man who caused so much pain. (Clarence E. Macartney, Macartney’s Illustrations (New York: Abingdon, 1946), pp. 163, 164).

God’s judgment will be based on what each has been given.  Those with greater knowledge, such as the apostates in the Hebrew church and in the New England church in Jonathan Edwards’s day, will be judged with greater stringency.  Judgment will have an equity impossible with men, however, because God knows the very thoughts and intents of the heart.

Notice first that judgment is God’s prerogative.  He says, “Vengeance is mine.”  Vengeance belongs to God.  This is a quote from the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 32:35.  Vengeance is God’s prerogative. It is part of His government of things. Christians cannot play God or usurp God’s authority. We cannot govern the universe. If we take revenge on others, we assume God’s role of dealing with those who might persecute us. God’s justice is not retaliatory in nature, but He operates with perfect knowledge of the problem.

In Romans 12 Paul quotes this passage to argue against pursuing vengeance ourselves, as is our natural habit when we’ve been wronged.  Instead, we should leave vengeance in God’s hands.  When we “leave room” for the wrath of God to be exercised against those who hurt us, trusting that He will take care of these offenses, we keep Satan from getting a “foothold” (Ephesians 4:26-27) in our hearts and driving a wedge between us.

The second thing we see about God’s judgment here is that it is deserved.  When God says, “I will repay” it reflects the fact that the sin committed deserved some kind of recompense.

Paul labored to show this truth in the first part of this letter to the Romans. Let me remind you of how he said it: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).  Wrath does not come without warrant. It is deserved.  The truth of God is known (Romans 1:19–20).  And the truth is suppressed.  And the fruit is ungodliness and unrighteousness.  And on that comes wrath (Ephesians 5:6; Colossians 3:6).

He says it even more explicitly in Romans 2:5: “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” We are responsible. We are storing up wrath with every act of indifference to Christ, with every preference for anything over God, and with every quiver of our affection for sin and every second of our dull affections for God. (These last two paragraphs come from John Piper’s message, “God’s Wrath,” https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/gods-wrath)

“I will repay” is God’s promise to us.  In Romans 12 it is God’s promise that God will deal with those who hurt us.  Here in Hebrews it is a warning that we will receive certain punishment as repayment for our sins.  You may wrong another person and somehow manage to escape his vengeance.  But God will repay!

Even this fact can be a comfort to us.  If someone has deeply hurt us, betrayed us, committed injustice toward us, we can be sure that one day God will repay.  While God will bring judgment against the perpetrator, He will also bring comfort and reward to those who were hurt.

Paul Johnson, in his book Modern Times, details the Nazi war crimes against the Jews and other European citizens. His descriptions of Auschwitz where 25,000 Jews “were literally worked to death” and 2,000,000 were gassed with Zyklon-B, followed by “the ghastly search for gold and the removal of the teeth and hair which were regarded by the Germans as strategic materials,” then burned to ashes at the rate of “2,000 bodies every twelve hours,” defies the imagination.  He explains the Nuremberg trial where German industrialists involved in the death camps were given remarkably light sentences and paid little reparations for those victimized. Then he asks the probing question, “But who is foolish enough to believe there is justice in this world?” [Modern Times, 415, 417, 422].  He is right.  Vengeance belongs to the Lord; He will repay.  That repayment may not be “in this world” or at this time, but it will happen.  He says, “I will repay.”  That is a promise.

The third thing we see here is that God’s judgment begins with “the people of God.”  Some will consider that their involvement with the church at some point in their lives is adequate shielding from the wrath of God.  But the next quote from Deuteronomy 32:36 explodes this deceitful notion: “The Lord will judge His people.” The implication in context is that the Lord discerns among his people.  Just as in Old Testament Israel most of the people did not have circumcised hearts and died in judgment while only a remnant remained, so in the church today there will be many who seem to be Christians but the actuality is that the road to life is narrow and few there be that find it.

The visible church does not contain a pure body of genuine believers.  As much as church leaders try, as closely as Scriptural principles are adhered to, absolute purity is impossible in this world.  Tares will be found among the wheat.  Goats are also a part of the flock of sheep.  But the day will come when the Lord distinguishes between the wheat and tares, the goats and sheep.  In that day there will be no more hiding or masquerading as Christians.  What will that day expose about you?

Finally, we come to the grand statement of terror, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (v. 31).  May we understand how dreadful and divine this is!  You really don’t want to fall into the hands of the living God, not in this way.

Although the apostates had formerly been associated with God’s people, their rebellion has put them on the side of God’s adversaries (10:27).  They will not escape.  Leaving the fellowship and repudiating the sacrifice of Christ does not remove them from judgment, but rather, places them squarely in line for judgment!  As Philip Hughes says (p. 426), “So far from escaping from God, the apostate falls into the hands of the living God: he abandons God as his Savior only to meet him as his Judge.”  So the author concludes, “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  He is trying, quite literally, to scare the hell out of them!

The Apostle John (Revelation 6:12-17) describes the terror of God’s judgment as it overtakes kings and commanders, the rich and the poor. After a great earthquake, the sun turns black and the moon turns blood red. The stars fall to earth and the sky splits apart. Mountains and islands move out of their places. Hiding themselves in caves and among the rocks of the mountains, everyone cries out to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb,for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

In this context, doing so is the most dreadful judgment one could imagine.  If eternal life and the joys of heaven defy our abilities to describe them, then we must understand that the converse is also true.  Eternal death and the terrors of hell are also beyond our ability to describe.  The writer doesn’t even try.  He just says it is “fearful” or “dreadful.”

The Living God has cosmic-sized, power-laden hands and is dreadful indeed.  He will not be tamed by our postmodern repulsion for Truth, nor by our aversion to the concept of judgment.  We must adjust ourselves to him or face the consequences.  The great foolishness of walking away from his gospel, judging Christ as insufficient, lies in this:  He has no greater means for dealing with sin.  This sacrifice, this work on the cross, is the best work for dealing with our sins, and all other means are by nature inferior.  (George H. Guthrie, The NIV Application Commentary: Hebrews, 367)

King David, after he had sinned against God by counting the number of fighting men in Israel and Judah, evidently viewed falling into God’s hands as divine judgment, because when God commanded him to choose between three alternatives, his wise reply was, “Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great” (2 Samuel 24:14).

Very possibly this exact passage was on our author’s mind and governed the form of the words he chose.  However that may be, for the true believer there is nothing better than to fall repentantly into the hands of God.  His hands are our hope!

That is the difference between David’s hope and the terrible judgment our author mentions here.  David falls into the hands of God as a repentant sinner, whereas the one who falls into the hands of God here in Hebrews is a defiant, hard-hearted rebel.

That makes all the difference.  You can choose either to fall into God’s hands as a repentant sinner, or fall into God’s hands as a defiant enemy.

But to fall into God’s hands will be dreadful for those who have rejected him because, as we have mentioned, divine judgment will be perfectly equitable.  The lurid picture of Napoleon does make the point.  The horrible truth is that everyone will receive what is coming to him.

This will be dreadful because it involves separation from God.  Union with God’s nature is bliss, but separation from him is horror.

It will be dreadful because it is eternal.  If one could travel at the speed of light for one hundred years until he escaped this galaxy, and then travel for three thousand years at the speed of light to reach the next galaxy, repeating the process one hundred thousand million times until he reached every galaxy—eternity would have just begun!

The dread of eternal separation and punishment is inconceivably painful.  This is an excruciating doctrine.  Jonathan Edwards’s metaphors in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God were not too strong, for the Bible is true!   Our lives do hang by a mere thread.  Eternity gapes before each of us.

To “fall into the hands of the living God” in this context is, therefore, to have resisted His love, refused His salvation, despised the warnings of His Spirit, and to have persisted thus past the point where God can consistently show further grace” (William Newell).  There’s no way around it, folks.  He’s talking about hell.  Eternal condemnation.  Separation forever from the presence of God and His glory and His grace.

But this dreadful judgment is met by the wonderful arms of Jesus, which he extends to us.  Those arms were stretched wide on the cross so that he might embrace us.  He was not only our atoning sacrifice, but he propitiates our sins, turning aside the Father’s righteous wrath.  Jesus today still has those same human, atoning, propitiating arms—and all we have to do is fall into them.

And when we do, nothing can snatch them out of His hands (John 10:28-30).  There can be no more comforting words to the Christian than to know beyond doubt that Jesus Christ and His Father have a doubly strong grip on us and we will spend eternity with Him in glory.

Sometimes people will say, “I don’t believe in a God of judgment.  My God is a God of love.”  If you subscribe to that view, then your “god” is not the living God who reveals Himself through His Word!  In one of the earliest records of God’s revelation of Himself, He said to Moses, “”The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” [So far we can all cheer.  “Yeah, that’s my kind of God!”  But keep on going] “but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Note carefully who is most in danger of committing this terrible sin of turning away from Christ: it is those who knew the truth about Jesus and who had associated with God’s people!  It is not those who are notorious sinners.  It is those who think, “I’m a child of Abraham!  I’m not a sinner like the Gentiles!  I keep the Law.  I offer my sacrifices.  Surely that’s good enough!  I don’t need a crucified Savior and His blood to atone for my sins!”  In other words, it’s the church-going religious person who does not see his need for the blood of Christ!  I hope that is not you, my friend.

Over the last two weeks we’ve been looking at the warning passage in Hebrews 10:26-31.  It is indeed a frightening warning.  We’ve noticed that this is a warning to an apostate, one who (1) willfully and (2) consistently (3) reject Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for sins, although (4) one has been exposed to the truth and convicted by the Spirit (vv. 26, 29).

This comes from Hebrews 10:26-31

26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Our next question is:  What is the doom of the apostate?

It is indeed exceedingly bleak.

Back in chapter 6, we were told that it would be “impossible” for this person to be “renewed again to repentance.”

Here in verse 26 is says,

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

“There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.”

This doesn’t mean that the sacrifice of Christ is ineffective or incapable of removing the guilt of this sin.  The preacher is not saying that if believers persist in sinning deliberately, there will come a point where the effect of Christ’s sacrifice runs out, and Christ would say, “I have paid for your sins up to this point, but I’m not prepared to pay for them any further.”  It’s not that there is something deficient about Christ’s sacrifice, that it’s not enough to pay for sins.  It means that the person who sins in this way willfully turns his back on and repudiates the only sacrifice available to him: the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.  There is no other sacrifice that can help him.  If he turns his back on Christ, if he willfully cuts himself off from the sole means of forgiveness, he won’t find anywhere else a sacrifice that can atone for his guilt.

Clearly, then, to reject this sacrifice is to be left with no sacrifice at all.  (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 419)

The first result of apostasy is that the apostate no longer has a sacrifice that can atone for his sins.  He is, therefore, beyond salvation.  The only sacrifice that can bring a person into God’s presence is the sacrifice of Christ’s blood in the New Covenant.  If Christ’s sacrifice is rejected, then all hope of salvation is forfeited.  Opportunity is gone, hope is gone, eternal life is gone.  Apart from Christ, everything worth having is gone.  (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 276)

Remember that the author’s primary audience would be Jews who had been exposed to the gospel, but who were now considering returning to the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant, depending upon the blood sacrifice of animals to save them.

He has already shown the insufficiency of these sacrifices to make one perfect, or to bring full and final forgiveness.

Back in Hebrews 10:4 he said, “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”  Did you hear that?  Impossible.  The blood of bulls and goats cannot possibly “take away sins.”

Then in 10:11 he said, “And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”  “Never” doesn’t mean sometimes or most of the time.  It means never.  The priestly sacrifices “can never take away sins.”

So he is saying, “Look, if you turn your back on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the only sacrifice that had ever fully satisfied the justice of God, then there is nothing else available to you.  You have turned you back on the only thing…the only thing…that works.  Nothing else remains.

Well, that isn’t exactly right.  Something does remain if you turn your back on Jesus and His sacrifice for you—”a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Heb. 10:27).

This reminds us of the fact that both Jesus and Paul affirm that there is only one way of salvation.  In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  There is only one way to the Father and that is through Jesus Christ.

Simply put, if Jesus is not the only way to God, then He is not just any way to God or one of many ways to God.  If there are many roads to God, then Jesus is not one of them, because He absolutely claimed there was only one road to God, and He Himself was that road. 

And in Acts 4:12 Paul says, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

John Piper reminds us that

Peter draws out the implication of this universal lordship of Jesus in verse 12: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”  Since God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead and since God has made him head over all his house—over all the kingdom and all the redeemed—therefore Jesus is now the only way to heaven, and the confession of his name is the only hope of salvation from sin and judgment.

We need to feel the force of this universal claim in our pluralistic age.  “There is salvation in no one else!”  Do you really mean no one, Peter?  Or are you just speaking in a limited Jewish context—only among the Jews there is no other way to heaven than their true Messiah?  No, he says, the reason there is salvation in no one else is that “there is no other name under heaven [not just no other name in Israel, but no other name under heaven, including the heaven over Iraq and the heaven over America] given among men [not just among Jews, but among humans] by which we must be saved” https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/there-is-salvation-in-no-one-else)

The chorus of Graham Kendrick’s song “Above the Clash of Creeds” has Acts 4:12 as its background and sums up the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.

There is no other way

By which we must be saved

His name is Jesus

The only Saviour

No other sinless life

No other sacrifice

In all creation

No other way.

So, when you turn your back on Jesus and His sacrifice for you—”a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Heb. 10:27).  In this statement we see a legal picture, an emotional picture and a physical picture of the plight too horrible imagine for those who reject Jesus Christ.

The legal picture is that God’s wrath is “judgment.”  It is the legal, just act of a judge pronouncing sentence upon guilty sinners.

The emotional picture is that God’s wrath is a “fury of fire.”  Literally, “a zeal of fire,” or a fiery passion.  God is not just a little bit miffed, but is passionate with fury.  That’s because His holy character demands it.

Jerry Bridges reminds us…

God’s justice is inflexible. Justice may be defined as rendering to everyone according to one’s due. Justice means we get exactly what we deserve – nothing more, nothing less. In our human system of justice a tension often exists between justice and mercy. Sometimes one prevails at the expense of the other. But there is no tension with God. Justice always prevails. God’s justice must be satisfied; otherwise His moral government would be undermined. (Jerry Bridges, The Gospel for Real Life, p. 43).

It is almost impossible to translate from Greek to English this idea of “zeal of fire” because it combines a personal disposition (“zeal”) with an inanimate object (“fire”).  He speaks of fire as if it were a person zealously burning everything in its path.

This is how Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, as well as the sons of Korah.  All throughout Scripture fire is connected with judgment and it will all end with the “lake of fire.”  In two chapters God is defined as a “consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28).  This fire will “consume the enemies of God.”

Third, this is a physical or material picture of a fire that “consumes the adversaries.”  It will swallow up the sinner in the flames of legal and passionate judgment.  “Consume” does not mean annihilation.  It doesn’t mean one ceases to exist.  “Consume” means to swallow up into suffering forever.  Justice will be exercised and God’s holy anger will be satisfied.

In other words, there are only two possibilities for sinners.  Either terrifying judgment or a sacrifice for sins.  There is no middle ground here, no neutrality.  If you turn your back on God’s only offer of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you become God’s enemy.

You remember the old line from The Godfather movie, when he got rid of a mobster from another family, he would say, “It’s not personal, it’s business.”  Well, here the reverse is true: It’s not business, it’s personal.  You have become an enemy of God.

Our third question from this text is: Why is this doom so severe?

We’ve seen that it is severe in vv. 26 and 27.  Here we see that the severity of the doom is directly related to the value of the revelation given.  In verses 28 and 29 our author argues from the lesser to the greater, a common rhetorical device.  Verse 28 reads…

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

This is from Deuteronomy 17 and it’s not just talking about any sin against the law of Moses, any normal breaking of the law, but specifically about Jewish (covenant) person who has rejected this revelation from God and his relationship with Yahweh and has begun to involve himself in worshipping an idol or idols.

What happened to such a person who committed this apostasy?  There was no room for negotiation, no defense.  That person was punished with death.

Now certainly due justice was followed.  You couldn’t be condemned for idolatry on the basis of just one witness.  If two or three had testimony that agreed, there was no appeal and no mercy.  The consequence of apostasy under the Old Covenant law was death.

So what happens when we come to the New Covenant?

There general feeling most people have is that God was a God of wrath in the Old Testament, punishing sins right and left, but now in the New Covenant age He is a God of mercy and grace, going light on punishment.

Actually, that’s not so.  Look at verse 29.

How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

The punishment for apostasy under the Old Covenant was death, and here we see that the punishment for apostasy now under the New Covenant is “much worse.”  What could be “much worse” that death?  Eternal condemnation, that’s what.

In reality, there is the same amount of justice and the same amount of mercy in both Testaments.  That is because God does not change.

Nothing in the Old Testament compares to the severity of judgment one reads about in the book of Revelation.  That is truly terrifying!

In fact, did you know that the strongest words of condemnation found in the Bible are intentionally placed on the lips of Jesus Christ?

Let me quote Him:

49 So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:49-50)

Thus says Jesus.  A few verses earlier he said:

41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:41-42)

And in the Gospel of Mark we read

43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’

Since the New Covenant is a much better covenant, to apostatize from it now is much more serious and incurs more terrifying judgment.  What was once physically fatal is now eternally catastrophic.

Again, we return to Judas, the New Testament poster boy for apostasy.  Remember what Jesus said to Pilate?

“he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:11)

Yes, Pilate would be severely judged for his part in Jesus’ death, but Judas much more.  Why?  Because Judas had experienced greater exposure to Jesus Christ and the gospel.  Yet, in the end he turned his back on Jesus.

We’ve already seen how our writer exposes this apostasy in verse 29 in three phrases, the first dealing with the person of Christ, the second dealing with the work of Christ and the third dealing with the person and work of the Holy Spirit.  This apostate is one who “has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace.”

How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot.  It is as if this person has taken the precious Son of God and with his heel ground him into the dirt like he would an insignificant bug.

He also treats the work of Christ as common, showing that his sanctification is fruitless.  What does he mean here by a sanctification that does not result in eternal glory?  It means that they’ve come under the influence of gospel preaching, have experienced the love of the saints, have partaken of the ordinances, have felt the moving of the Holy Spirit, have changed their moral behavior…yet concluded that there was no worth to Jesus Christ

I hope that you have not treated Jesus Christ this way, but rather that He is precious to you and the cross is valued by you and the Holy Spirit is working in you.

Thank you for joining me again in our study of the epistle to the Hebrews.  Our author is warning his readers (and us) of the danger of apostasy and its tragic consequences.  Because this is such a serious issue, it is important for us to understand what apostasy is from a biblical viewpoint.

There are some who are concerned that they may have committed the “unpardonable sin” or have committed apostasy, so it is vital that we understand what our author is talking about.  We are looking at Hebrews 10:26-31, but especially verses 26 to 29 to understand this issue of apostasy.

26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

So far we have seen that this sinful state of apostasy is deliberate (v. 26) and consistent (v. 26).

A third characteristic of the sin of the apostate is that it is committed in full knowledge of the truth, “if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth.”

Here is possibly the clearest and most concise scriptural definition of apostasy–receiving knowledge of the truth, that is, the gospel, but willfully remaining in sin. An apostate has seen and heard the truth–he knows it well–but he willfully rejects it.

What our author is talking about is the knowledge of the truth of the Gospel—that forgiveness of sins is through Jesus, through his death on the cross.  It is not through animal sacrifices or a life of obedience to the law.

What our author is saying is that although every apostate is an unbeliever, not every unbeliever is an apostate.  Unbelievers, some of them, have never heard a clear presentation of the Gospel.  Many have never heard “the old, old story” and know nothing about Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection; they have heard no clear presentation of the Gospel.  They are still sinners, guilty before God, because they have all received some knowledge about God from creation (Romans 1:19-20), but instead of responding positively they “suppressed the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18) “so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

But, those people have never received the full light of the revelation that comes through the gospel.  Apostates, on the other hand, have been exposed to the gospel, have received “the knowledge of the truth,” but now are turning their backs, deliberately and consistently, on it.

Do you remember that Jesus said when he went through Galilee preaching the Gospel and getting such meager response?

Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. (Matthew 10:15)

We are all held accountable for what we know.  Those who know the truth and turn their backs on it have greater accountability than those who do not know the truth.  The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were great.  But Israel’s sin is greater because they had more exposure to the gospel.

An apostate has received maximum exposure to the Gospel.  He or she knows the facts.  Perhaps, for a time, they displayed a measure of receptivity.  He may have raised his hand at a meeting or she may have walked an aisle.  He may have even been baptized, been associated with a church fellowship, even changed some behaviors.

His problem is not ignorance.  He didn’t lack information on how to be saved or what to believe in.  He lacks nothing intellectually.  He has received “the knowledge of the truth.”  One author has said, “An apostate can be bred only in the brilliant light of proximity to Christ.”

As we will see down in v. 29.  An apostate is one who has heard the gospel, been exposed to the truth, but has turned their back upon the truth and upon Jesus Christ.

But why would a person who knows the gospel, has seen the light, has even experienced many of the blessings of the Holy Spirit, ever reject so wonderful a gift?  What causes people to do that?  In a sense, there is always just one cause, willful unbelief.  Following our own wills often have no reason except that this is what we want to do.  (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 274)

Apostasy is not new, nor is God’s attitude toward it.  It is the most serious of all sins, because it is the most deliberate and willful form of unbelief.  It is not a sin of ignorance, but of rejecting known truth.  (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 270-1)

Calvin explains:

The apostle describes as sinners not those who fall in any kind of sin, but those who forsake the Church and separate themselves from Christ. . . . There is a great difference between individual lapses and universal desertion of the kind which makes for a total falling away from the grace of Christ.

It seems to be the same sin that Jesus calls “the unpardonable sin” in Matthew 12:32 and Mark 3:29.  There Jesus is dealing with the Pharisees, who had heard Jesus’ teaching and seen his miracles, but instead of believing in Him, claimed that His miracles were attributable to the power of Satan.  This passage happens at the turning point in the Gospels where Jesus begins to devote most of His time to His disciples, preparing them for their future ministry, because the nation, as a whole, had rejected Him.

The apostle John summarizes:

11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Apostasy doesn’t arise from the context of the pagan world; it arises from the context of the Christian church.  It arises in the hearts of people who have been exposed to the Gospel and to the truth about Jesus Christ.  Apostates are raised in the fertile soil of churches just like this one.  It is not enough for you merely to hear the story of Jesus and His love, you must turn from your sin and embrace Him as your Savior.  You must grab hold of Jesus and say, “I will not let you go until you save me.”  When that is your heart desire, He will.

Apostates reject the light they have been given, the truth they have been shown, because they love their sin (John 3:19).  So just because you attend a church that teaches the Bible, you go to Sunday School or you memorize verses in AWANA, even if you go to a Bible college or get a seminary degree, that does not automatically make you a child of God.

Gospel knowledge, when disregarded and not acted upon, is fuel for greater condemnation.  So it is not unbelievers who have never heard that are in view here, nor true believers in Jesus Christ, but make-believers—people who look and smell like Christians, but they are not actively trusting Jesus Christ for salvation.  Ultimately, they are trusting in themselves.

Fourth, the apostates sin consists in the rejection of Christianity and Christ.

Did you notice that verse 26 begins “For if we go on sinning…”?  That little word “for” connects us back to vv. 24-25 to show us that this condition of apostasy is linked back to the tendency of some to neglect assembling together.  People first turn away from the church fellowship, then from the Gospel.  The “sinning” begins by forsaking meeting together.

No one wakes up one morning and thinks, “Today I think I’ll become an apostate.”  Rather, they say, “I don’t think I’ll go to church today.  I work six days a week and need a day off.  We stayed out late and its hard to get the kids up in time.  Beside, I don’t really get much out of it.”

When they stop going to church, they are a step away from turning their backs on Jesus Christ.  This person, in v. 27 is called an “adversary.”  Because they turned their backs on God, God has turned against them.

Verse 29 describes the sin of the apostate as “one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?”

Where did all this begin?  By becoming casual about pursuing Christian fellowship, by treating Christian community as optional, something to do when there are no other good options.

An apostate is educated in the gospel.  He has heard about the Son of God, knows that His blood sacrifice is necessary and has experienced some of the grace of the Holy Spirit.  However, while he possesses a clear knowledge of the Gospel, he has not experienced the transforming power of the Gospel.  In essence, he has been inoculated over time and now turns his back upon it and renounces it.  A few weeks, or months or maybe even years of association with a church is ultimately rejected.

We’ve seen it happen, haven’t we.  Today it is called “deconstructing” your faith, rejecting what you once believed in.  And while it is always important to examine ourselves and what we believe, we need to do it in line with the truth of God’s Word rather than accepting what the culture is currently identifying as “truth” or “the right side of history.”

Apostasy, according to one Puritan, is “perversion to evil after a seeming conversion from it.”  It is “the dog returning to its vomit.”  The classic illustration of this is Judas Iscariot.  For roughly three years he was exposed to God’s greatest expression of His mercy, love and truth in the person of Jesus Christ, and yet ultimately he repudiated the light that had been given to him and chose instead the darkness.

Listen to how the apostle John (1 John 2:19) speaks of an apostate:

They went out from us, 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 become plain that they all are not of us.

Where did they go?  It doesn’t really make much difference.  An apostate is defined in terms of who you leave rather than in where you end up.

Thus, to summarize, an apostate is one who has tasted the benefits of the gospel—learned the truth about the Son of God and the blood sacrifice He made (v. 29) and then deliberately and consistently turned their back on it.

In the words of v. 29, they “spurned the Son of God,” “profaned the blood of the covenant” and “outraged the Spirit of grace.”

The January 1991 issue of Harper’s Magazine carried a reproduction of an anti-Christian tract entitled Dear Believer, a “non-tract” published by the Freedom from Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin.  The tract variously attacked creation and miracles and then God himself, finally coming to Jesus and saying:

And Jesus is a chip off the old block. He said, “I and my father are one,” and he upheld “every jot and tittle” of the Old Testament law.  He preached the same old judgment: vengeance and death, wrath and distress, hell and torture for all nonconformists.  He never denounced the subjugation of slaves or women.  He irrationally cursed and withered a fig tree for being barren out of season.  He mandated burning unbelievers.  (The Church has complied with relish.)  He stole a horse.  You want me to accept Jesus, but I think I’ll pick my own friends, thank you.

I also find Christianity to be morally repugnant.  The concepts of original sin, depravity, substitutionary forgiveness, intolerance, eternal punishment, and humble worship are all beneath the dignity of intelligent human beings.

This tract captures the emotion of the word “trampled,” which is a singularly powerful expression for disdain—as, for example, when the swine find your pearls and “trample them underfoot and turn to attack you” (Matthew 7:6; cf. Matthew 5:13; Luke 8:5).  Figuratively, the metaphor portrays taking “the Son of God”—the highest accord given to Christ in Hebrews—and grinding him into the dirt.  It is a complete devaluing of the person of Jesus Christ.  It is a denial of His deity.  Thus, turning away from Christ is an attack on his person.

Sam Storms says…

Worse than denial, this is to treat Jesus and his identity as God incarnate and his atoning death on the cross with utter contempt.  It is to say that Jesus as the Son of God who died for sinners is worthless, on the same level as garbage on the ground that one would consciously crush under one’s feet. 

One commentator strings together a series of phrases to describe this despicable attitude toward Jesus. It is a “sneering rejection of Jesus,” a “rebellious denial” of him, a “supercilious contradiction” of his superiority to everything in the Old Testament, a “callous abandonment” of our great High Priest, and a “contemptuous repudiation of him who uniquely is the Son of God, eternal, incarnate, crucified, risen, and glorified” (Philip E. Hughes, 422).

Second, apostasy is an attack on Christ’s work, for the one who has done this “has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified” (v. 29).  Hebrews 9 is especially a lyrical song about the superiority of Christ’s blood.  Because Christ’s blood was nothing less than his divine life willingly offered, it could do what no animal’s blood could do—namely, take away sin and bestow a clear conscience.

Oh, precious is the flow

That makes me white as snow;

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

The sort of apostate pictured here had at one time professed faith in Christ, listened to the Word preached, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper.  Those initial acts “sanctified” him.  As elsewhere in Hebrews, the idea of being sanctified refers to the initial act of being set apart for God.  But his faith, such as it was, was not internal and was not genuine, and now he consciously rejects Christ’s work. “Jesus’ blood,” he says, “is common, just like any other man’s. There is nothing special about it.”  And, in fact, “it was implied that his blood was unclean as being that of a transgressor.”  This would be tantamount to saying that Jesus deserved to die, because, like us, he was just a miserable sinner.

Third, having rejected the person and work of Christ, he also rejects the person and work of the Holy Spirit, as verse 29 concludes: “and has outraged the Spirit of grace.”  This is the only place in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit is called “the Spirit of grace” (but cf. Zechariah 12:10), and what a beautiful and fitting title it is.  He enlightens our minds, he seals our hearts in adoption, he regenerates us with spiritual life, and he grafts us into the Body of Christ—all effects of grace.  We ought to make note of this lovely ascription and use it devotionally.  The Spirit of grace—the Holy Spirit of grace—gives and gives and gives!

Since the Spirit’s primary work is to testify of and glorify Jesus Christ, when we trample underfoot the Son of God and count His blood as worthless and unclean, it enrages the Holy Spirit.  He or she has in effect spit in the face of God and dishonored, disrespected, and insulted everything we know to be true of the Holy Spirit.

To “outrage the Spirit of grace” is an immense act of hubris and arrogance (the Greek verb for “outraged” comes from the noun hybris).  What had happened is that the Holy Spirit had come to the apostate, witnessed to him about spiritual reality, and courted his soul, but the apostate rejected the Spirit’s witness with outrageous arrogance.  Such persons deliberately close their eyes to the light, just as the Pharisees had done when they attributed the Spirit’s works of mercy and power to Beelzebub—and thus their condemnation is the same:

Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matthew 12:31, 32)

To reject the gracious work of “the Spirit of grace” thus renders one irremediably lost.

“Taken cumulatively, the three clauses in v 29 define persistent sin (v 26a) as an attitude of contempt for the salvation secured through the priestly sacrifice of Christ. Nothing less than a complete rejection of the Christian faith satisfies the descriptive clauses in which the effects of the offense are sketched” (William Lane, Hebrews 9-13, p. 295).

The hymn “I Love to Tell the Story,” speaks of our passion in sharing the gospel.  The song goes through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in verses 4-6 and ends with a commission to tell the world this wonderful news.  This message needs to be the single most defining characteristic of every evangelical church—that God’s Son so profoundly loved this world that He willing gave up His life to save every sinner who would believe in Him.

This is a story we should love to tell.  But if we are to give due regard to the totality of God’s Word, we must remember that this is not the only story that God has given us to tell.  To be more precise, it may be better to say it’s not that we’ve been given another story to tell.  Rather, the story we have has a dark side as well.

It is the old, old story of apostasy, of turning our backs on God, of falling away from the gospel and its saving benefits.  That is truly a vital issue.  It is the difference between life and death, between heaven and hell.

Jonathan Edwards, America’s foremost theologian and pastor during the First Great Awakening in the mid-18^th century once preached a famous sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  It wasn’t because he was an angry, cantankerous preacher, but it was because he loved his people and desired their true salvation.

He was less concerned with God’s wrath than with his grace, which was freely extended to sinners who repented.  Jonathan Edwards gave his people a whiff of the sulphurs of Hell that they might deeply inhale the fragrances of grace.

It is just as important for us to understand and take seriously the wrath of God against sin and unbelief, as it is for us to understand and appreciate the sweetness of God’s grace towards unbelieving sinners.

Divine wrath is righteous antagonism toward all that is unholy. It is the revulsion of God’s character to that which is a violation of God’s will. Indeed, one may speak of divine wrath as a function of divine love! For God’s wrath is his love for holiness and truth and justice. It is because God passionately loves purity and peace and perfection that he reacts angrily toward anything and anyone who defiles them. J. I. Packer explains it this way:

“Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as He did in good be a good God? Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in His world be morally perfect? Surely not. But it is precisely this adverse reaction to evil, which is a necessary part of moral perfection, that the Bible has in view when it speaks of God’s wrath” (Knowing God, 136-37).

This concern joins his heart with that of the author of Hebrews some 1700 years earlier.  “The stakes were identical—heaven or hell. And the symptoms, though not identical, were similar as well—a declining regard for the church’s authority, a willfulness to define one’s relationship to the church in one’s own terms, and, in some cases, quitting the church altogether” (R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, Volume 2, p. 40).

I hope you’ve come to love and appreciate the book of Hebrews.  It is a great book filled with deep theological truths that impact our lives today.  But we’ve come to discover that woven throughout this epistle are five of the strongest warning passages in the Word of God—warnings concerning possible apostasy and the dreadful doom that is its consequence.

And it can be argued that the warning before us in our passage today is the most severe.  Here we read of a frightening judgment, a rage that rises zealously, of enemies consumed, of punishment severe, of vengeance that is dreadful.  Most astounding of all, God is the subject of these severe actions.

That passage is Hebrews 10:26-39.

26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. 37 For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; 38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” 39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

While the holiness of God requires that He show His wrath against all sin, it is obvious from this passage that the sin that most powerfully arouses God’s wrath is not adultery, or homosexuality, but the sin of apostasy.

The danger is real and our author even includes himself by saying, “if we go on sinning deliberately…”  The thought seems to be closely connected with the preceding verse, suggesting that if we forsake our fellow-Christians, it may easily lead to our forsaking Christ.

From this passage of Scripture we will discover the answers to four very important questions for all of us.

First, who is the apostate?

Second, what is his or her doom?

Third, why is this doom so severe?

Finally, how can the apostate be certain of such doom?

So first, what is an apostate?

It is important for us to answer this question.  Some of us, hearing these words, begin to tremble with fear.  Am I an apostate?  Maybe because you have a sensitive conscience or because you see a pattern of sin in your life, you wonder whether you yourself are an apostate.  This passage causes you to sweat and shake.

If you are a serious-minded Christian, I know that you are aware that you continue to sin.  I don’t have to do anything to convince you of that.  You are aware that although you are a saint in God’s eyes, you still sin in your everyday practice.  There are occasions when you surprise yourself.  There are times when you become deeply discouraged that you have not conquered certain sins.  Paul acknowledged that he was still a sinner late in his life.  Although he had matured and become holy enough to encourage others to imitate his life, he still called himself the “foremost” sinner (1 Timothy 1:15).

This tendency to give in to sin is captured in one of our favorite hymns Come Thou Fount.  One of the choruses goes

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above

If you feel troubled about your sins, or your tendency to sin, I want to put you at ease.  You are NOT what this passage is talking about.

Apostasy is not the same as the struggle with sin that all genuine Christians endure (cf. Romans 7:15-25).  Apostasy is not the counting of my sins, tallying them up and discovering that I have failed the test this week.

We all struggle with sin, and the more we grow in our relationship with Christ—in our understanding of God’s holiness and our own sinfulness—the more conscious we are of the fight.  In part, this is what defines us as a Christian.  We are actively fighting for holiness.

Every Christian, at times, falls prey to sin and yields to temptation.  Is that not true?  What is also true is that every authentic believer really desires to be righteous (Romans 7:22-23).  Every authentic disciple hates his sin, repents of his sin, is offended at his sin.

This is not the case with an apostate.

Notice what verse 26 says…

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

Four things characterize the apostate in this verse:

First, his sin is willful, it is purposeful, it is deliberate.  The word translated “deliberately” means “purposefully.”  It is to sin with intention, in willful, outright defiance.  The Old Testament identifies this as the “high-handed sin,” the sin that displays outright contempt for God’s authority and His Word.  Numbers 15:30-31 describes…

30 But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, reviles the LORD, and that person shall be cut off from among his people. 31 Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be on him.”

Notice the very severe consequences for the person sinning “with a high hand,” that he “shall be utterly cut off” shows just how serious an issue this is.  God is telling Moses that there are no offerings for these sins done in defiance of God’s law.  This represents a brazen attitude, an arrogance, a cockiness of heart and expresses an open defiance of God.

We know what deliberate, defiant sin is.  R. Kent Hughes tells about his two-year-old grandson, Joshua Simpson, who climbed up on the kitchen counter to get at a forbidden stick of gum.  But, alas, his father appeared several inches from Joshua’s face, saying, “Joshua, you may not have the gum.  If you eat that gum, I will spank you!”  Joshua looked at the gum, then at his father, and back at the gum.  Then he took the gum, slowly unwrapped it as he watched his dad, and put it in his mouth.  Joshua got his spanking!  But there was more, because a few minutes later he returned and took another stick, climbed down, ducked behind a corner to unwrap it—and got another spanking.  The boy is a sinner, and so are we all.

“The sinner with a high hand feels no guilt; therefore the offense is not sacrificially expiable.  The one who sins defiantly may not feel the guilt of his violation, but he is nonetheless guilty before God and man.” (Dennis Cole)

Willfully (hekousiōs) carries the idea of deliberate (NIV) intention that is habitual. The reference here is not to sins of ignorance or weakness, but to those that are planned out, determined, done with forethought.  The difference between sins of ignorance and sinning willfully is much like the difference between involuntary manslaughter and first-degree murder.  Hekousiōs is habitual.  It is the permanent renunciation of the gospel, the permanent forsaking of God’s grace.  (John MacArthur Jr., The MacArthur NT Commentary: Hebrews, 273)

In a sense, every sin is a “willful sin.”  But here, the writer to the Hebrews spoke of something much more severe and relevant to these discouraged Jewish Christians who contemplated a retreat from a distinctive Christianity and a return to Judaism with its sacrificial system.  This is turning your back on Jesus.

“It has nothing to do with backsliders in our common use of that term.  A man may be overtaken in a fault, or he may deliberately go into sin, and yet neither renounce the Gospel, nor deny the Lord that bought him.  His case is dreary and dangerous, but it is not hopeless; no case is hopeless but that of the deliberate apostate, who rejects the whole Gospel system, after having been saved by grace, or convinced of the truth of the Gospel.” (Clarke)

Our text is talking about deliberate, intentional sin. In fact, the word “deliberately” stands first in the Greek for emphasis.

This stands in sharp contrast to our woke culture today, which rewards people for blatant expressions of sin and lays guilt on anyone who would pass judgments upon such individuals by calling what they do evil.

Whatever the apostasy is it is not inadvertent or accidental.  It is not an expression of vulnerability to weakness.  Rather, it expresses the very desire of the heart, a willful expression of rebellion.

Psalm 19 distinguishes between sins of ignorance and sins of deliberation.

12 Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. 13 Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

There are “errors” and “hidden faults,” and then there are “presumptuous sins.”  All of these are sins we are accountable for, but there is a progression here.  David Guzik identifies these stages of temptation and sin.

• It goes from passing temptation to chosen thought (errors).
• It goes from chosen thought to object of meditation.
• It goes from object of meditation to wished-for fulfillment.
• It goes from wished-for fulfillment to planned action (secret faults).
• It goes from planned action to opportunity sought.
• It goes from opportunity sought to performed act.
• It goes from performed act to repeated action.
• It goes from repeated action to delight (presumptuous sins).
• It goes from delight to new and various ways.
• It goes from new and various ways to habit.
• It goes from habit to idolatry, demanding to be served.
• It goes from idolatry to sacrifice.
• It goes from sacrifice to slavery.

All along this continuum the Holy Spirit – and hopefully our conscience – say, “No – stop!”  All along this continuum, we are given the way of escape by God (1 Corinthians 10:13), if we will only take it.  Yet if we do not, and we end up in slavery to sin, it legitimately questions the state of our soul (1 John 3:6-9).

David was concerned enough to ask God to keep him from presumptuous sins.  Charles Spurgeon says, “Will you just note, that this prayer was the prayer of a saint, the prayer of a holy man of God?  Did David need to pray thus?  Did the ‘man after God’s own heart’ need to cry, ‘Keep back your servant?’  Yes, he did.”

We all do.  And that, again, is why we need the fellowship of the saints, so that we will not develop “an evil, unbelieving heart, leading [us] to fall away from the living God” (Heb. 3:12).

Second, we see another characteristic of the apostate in that his or her sin is continual.  If we deliberately “go on sinning” or “keep on sinning.”  The sin of the apostate is both deliberate and durative.

This is not to be confused with the ongoing sin that every believer fights with as residual sin that lies in his mortal body.  This, rather, is the person who has settled permanently in a rigid disposition of disobedience.

Apostasy is not the person who commits one of the really big sins, like David did with adultery and murder.  Nor are we to think of apostasy as that period of time in the life of a real Christian when he has yielded to some form of temptation.  Yes, that is serious, but it is not apostasy. 

Apostasy is characterized by an unmoved, settled determination and by a consistent habit of persisting in the same sin over and over again.  It is consistent sinning with a defiant attitude.