Author: Lamar Austin

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.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been talking about fellowship.  We’ve been looking at Hebrews 10:24-25 where the author of Hebrews is encouraging his readers to engage in deep fellowship because life was only going to get harder for them.  Listen to his encouragement:

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

So far we’ve seen the method of fellowship—considering how we may spur one another to love and good deeds.  Just being together is not enough.  Yes, that is needed, as verse 25 will show, but when we meet together, all of us need to pay attention to one another and identify how to encourage (v. 25) or agitate (v. 24, “spur”) them to get off their butts and develop a heart of love that loves to serve others.

Second, we saw that the goal of fellowship was to promote loving hearts and good deeds.  We want people to be motivated by love in their service of others.

Third, the object, or target of our fellowship is “one another.”  This ministry is not aimed at outsiders, but at those within the fellowship.

Now, today we’re going to look at verse 25 and see the means of fellowship.  Actually, the means are communicated through two participles—first negatively (“not neglecting to meet together”) and then positively (“encouraging one another”).  These are the two means by which we spur one another to love and good works.

Notice that sandwiched between the two exhortations to speak up (“spur” and “encourage”) is this vital exhortation: “don’t quit on one another!”

The participle is in the present tense, including an ongoing action, “don’t continue neglecting to meet together,” which is matched by the statement “as is the habit of some.”  In other words, it was becoming a growing, and dangerous, habit that some were dropping out.

“Meeting together” refers to assembling in the same location.  This, of course, may refer to the typical Sunday morning gathering, the large group gathering, but it could have any other kind of gathering of believers in smaller groupings in mind as well.  It merely points out that proximity over time is necessary for developing the deeper kinds of relationships in which “spurring” and “encouraging” can happen regularly.

In America there are 18 million self-proclaimed evangelical Christians.  Ten million of those have not been to church in the last six months! 

In the four years before the pandemic, 2016 through 2019, an average of 34% of U.S. adults said they had attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days.  From 2020 to the present, the average has been 30%, including a 31% reading in a May 1-24 survey. (https://news.gallup.com/poll/507692/church-attendance-lower-pre-pandemic.aspx#:~:text=Church%20Attendance%2C%20Past%20Seven%20Days%2C%20Historical%20Trend&text=Church%20attendance%20in%20past%20seven,in%20most%20years%20before%202013.)

Roughly 40% of Americans say they seldom or never attend church or synagogue according to a recent Gallup poll.  29% attend church once a week.  11% attend almost every week and 16% attend about once a month.

Thus, it has become the “habit” of some to drop out and not attend often.  Sam Storms says, “You don’t cultivate a habit overnight.  It takes time.  You find yourself immersed in a habit, often one you can’t shake or break, when you live unintentionally.  That is to say, you don’t get up each day with a plan for what is going to happen.  You simply drift through life.  You take things as they come without forethought or preparation or prioritizing the many things that compete for your time and allegiance.” (https://www.samstorms.org/all-articles/post/why-must-a-christian-be-in-community-in-a-local-church-hebrews-1023-25).  What the author of Hebrews is encouraging in Hebrews 10:24-25 is more like “urgent intentionality” rather than “lackadaisical unintentionality.”

Over the years there has been a decline in commitment to church.  It used to be that people would give 5 hours a week—Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night.  Now we’re lucky to get you to church for a couple of hours Sunday morning.  In fact, statistics show that 70% of Christians are content with their spiritual life just by attending church one time on Sunday.

There are many reasons for this—busyness, overcrowded schedules, disappointment with the pastor or the church, but at the bottom of it all is a satisfaction with minimal spirituality.  And it is bound to be dangerous, as Hebrews 3:12-13 shows.

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

These verses are telling us that any of us has the potential of developing “an evil, unbelieving heart” and causes us to “fall away from the living God” unless we avail ourselves of the possibility of being exhorted by others.  That doesn’t happen when we do not assemble together with other believers.  It doesn’t happen when we watch church on television.  And when it doesn’t happen, we are in real spiritual danger!

Mark Dever, pastor of Capital Hill Baptist Church, near D.C., has written a book entitled Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, and in it points out the connection between missing church and getting caught up in sinning.

Nonattendance, in the early years of the church, was considered one of the most sinister of sins, because it usually veiled all the other sins.  When someone began to be in sin, you would expect them to stop attending.

The way that we guard ourselves against developing that evil, unbelieving heart is to place ourselves around those who will exhort us and remind us that sin is very deceptive.

Now, there is a direct link between that kind of God-based hope and the love and good works that get stirred up in assembling together.  Look at verses 34-35 in chapter 10.

For you had compassion on those in prison [there’s the love and good works that got stirred up by assembling together], and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property [there’s the proof that the love was not legalistic or forced or coerced, it was joyful], since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one [there’s the source of the love—confidence of hope in God’s promise of reward.  Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

That’s just another way of saying verse 23, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Our faith can be weak or become weaker, and we need others to encourage us to hang on to God’s promises.  We need to remind one another of God’s promises, to tell stories of His faithfulness so that they would be encouraged to believe.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.”

We need that.

Assembling together is so important to others, but it is also important to you.

Charles Spurgeon, the great evangelist of the nineteenth century, told the story of a woman who came to him claiming that her relationship with God was just fine, even though she saw no need to actually attend church.  As she chattered away, he walked over to the fireplace in the room, and with the tongs, picked out a blazing coal. 

He carefully set the coal on the hearth, all the while listening as she made her case.  She noted his actions but failed to see their significance until he asked her to observe the coal.  The once red-hot coal, separated from the fire’s warmth, grew colder and colder, sitting alone on the hearth.

The significance of the lonely coal was not lost on his friend.  “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of a friend,” says the book of Proverbs (27:17). 

In another sermon he preached, “Warm hearts are not easily kept alive among empty pews.  A coal must be very lively to burn alone, but many glowing coals laid together help to keep each other alight.”

So assembling together helps everyone.

Several years ago, former American Prisoners of War were interviewed to determine what methods used by the enemy had been most effective in breaking their spirit.  Researchers learned that the prisoners didn’t break down from physical deprivation and torture as quickly as they did from solitary confinement or from being frequently moved around and separated from friends.  It was further learned that the soldiers drew their greatest strength from the close attachments they had formed with the small military units to which they belonged.

These observations give us insight into why Christians need the group experience of fellowship with other believers to help them remain loyal to the Lord.  Our own personal relationship to God, vital as that is, is not sufficient to produce spiritual maturity and endurance.  Relationships within a unified, Spirit-filled body of believers are essential for growth and for maintaining our individual faithfulness to the Savior (Hebrews 10:23-25).  Sometimes we would rather not be involved in church life, thinking it is easier just to go it alone.  But Christians who do that miss out on all the benefits.  Let’s remember that God in His wisdom has grouped us together for strength.

Isolation is the single most effective tool Satan has in his arsenal.  1 Peter describes Satan as a “roaring lion.”  Well, if you’ve ever watched the National Geographic channel you see that what a lion does is first they isolate a potential victim from the herd and then once the victim is isolated it becomes easy prey and soon becomes the lion’s supper.

Why go to church?  In a letter to the editor of a British newspaper, a man complained that he saw no sense in going to church every Sunday.

“I have been attending services quite regularly for the past 30 years,” he wrote, “and during that time…I have listened to no less than 3,000 sermons.  But, to my consternation, I discover that I cannot remember a single one of them.  I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitably spent on something else.”

That letter sparked many responses.  One, however, was the clincher.

“I have been married for 30 years.  During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals—mostly of my wife’s cooking.  Suddenly I have discovered that I cannot remember the menu of a single meal.  And yet, I have received nourishment from every one of them.  I have the distinct impression that without them I would have starved to death long ago.”

But it is obviously more than just going to church, just showing up, that is at stake here.  Real fellowship happens when we pay attention to one another and figure out how to exhort and encourage one another to love and good deeds, to continue to rest in God’s promises, so that we don’t allow an “evil, unbelieving heart” to develop and fall away from God.  We are encouraged to “assemble together” so that we can know one another, think about one another, speak to one another to promote spiritual development in each other.

The dangers are that we would stop getting together, fail to know one another, stay silent and as a result we would see a growing departure from the faith (Hebrews 3:13), which is exactly what we are seeing from the youngest generation, and we would see little love and few good deeds.

Notice how the early church did that.  They loved being together, sharing time and space.  Listen to these verses from the story of the early church as recorded in the Book of Acts: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:42-44).  “Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico” (Acts 5:12)

Just like the Triune God, they hung out together, and they did it well.

Such fellowship does not just happen.  In fact, it requires a relentless struggle on the part of people whose fallen natures lurking within them fight to prevent any true bonding.  We are like sheep constantly going astray, wanting our own way.  That is our nature.

Solomon, in Proverbs 27:17, says “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”  But iron only sharpens iron if the two pieces have sustained contact with one another.  And we can only shape and develop one another into that God wants us to be by maintaining regular contact with each other.

Hanging out well requires a commitment to engage others.  It’s so easy to disengage from the body of Christ.  After all, relationships are messy, complicated, boring, risky and sometimes painful.  You might get hurt.  People can be so dull and live such petty lives…unlike me.  People do such stupid things…unlike me.  People can be so mean and cutting and insensitive…unlike me.  Most of us could share stories of disappointment and rejection.  Or perhaps you know the hurt of losing a close friend.  People move in and out of our lives way too fast.  The change, loss and grief can be devastating.

Struggling to knit your heart together with another saint is often painful, but Proverbs 27:6a says that “wounds from a friend can be trusted.”  The more you know that someone loves you, the more you trust his or her “wounds,” that is, the words he speaks to pierce your heart and encourage or correct you.  Statistics show that 95% of Christian men do not have a close friend.

Jesus knew the value of friendship.  While preparing for His ministry, He chose twelve “interns” to travel with Him and share in all His experiences.  These men were united, strengthened and encouraged to take their stand in times of persecution and severe hardship.  Together they  brought hope to those who were without hope.

Spending time together provoking one another to love and good deeds…that is a formula that could change the world.

Christian fellowship is God’s precious gift…to each of us…and to the world.

The author of Hebrews reminds us that assembling together for the purpose of encouraging and exhorting good deeds through love grows all the more important as the days pass.  He says at the end of verse 25 that all of this should be happening “all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

We should not be assembling less, but more.  No matter what persecutions come, no matter how busy we get, it is more and more vital for us to assemble together and encourage and exhort one another to hang on to God’s promises and minister to each other in practical expressions of love.

The “day drawing near” is likely the day of Christ’s return to earth.  While it will be a joyous, victorious day, full of deliverance and vindication for God’s people, it will be preceded by seven years of “hell on earth.”  Saints will be persecuted like never before.  The heavens and earth will convulse with God-ordained seizures, making life on earth miserable.

The verb “drawing near” is present tense, meaning that even as the author wrote these words he saw it in process of happening.  F. F. Bruce reminds us, ““Each successive Christian generation is called upon to live as the generation of the end-time, if it is to live as a Christian generation.” 

“Christians were to live as if the dawning of the day was so near that its arrival was only just beyond the horizon.” (Guthrie)

Kent Hughes summarizes this passage saying:

Hebrews 10:19–25 is no insignificant text. Its role in moving from instruction to application gives it huge significance. It tells us that if we have the proper confidence that comes from our access and advocacy before God, there are three things we must do for the sake of the church and her survival.

• We must draw near in prayer to God with a wholehearted sincerity.  Our entire human spirit must be engaged in prayer and worship.
• We must hold on to the anchor of hope we possess.  Our hope is in Jesus and is anchored in Heaven, where he intercedes for us.  This is no cock-eyed optimism but tremendous reality.
• We must devote ourselves to the corporate church and do everything we can to provoke each other to love and good deeds.

If we do this, the church will ride high on every storm that comes!  And we must do this more and more as we “see the Day drawing near.”

Thank you for joining me again in our study of Hebrews.  We are in Hebrews 10, verses 24-25, a very practical passage for us to focus upon today.

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

We are looking at the importance of biblical fellowship and in this passage we see that assembling together, being together, is important, but that fellowship is more than just physical proximity—it involves ministry towards one another.

I love the fellowship of believers.  I enjoy getting together with other people who love Jesus Christ.  David expresses how I often feel in Psalm 16:3, “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”

Our text begins with the method of fellowship, or how fellowship begins.  It begins by “considering” one another, of paying attention to one another.  In Greek the verb “concerned,” (NIV – consider) means to fix one’s eye or mind on another. (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Hebrews, 229-30).  It means to study them, to look at them closely and carefully.

The beginning of fellowship is putting others in the forefront of our minds, consistently.  In means that we have to get our minds off of ourselves.  I think the reason there is not more growth in God’s kingdom AND in individual believers’ lives is because we live such self-centered, self-absorbed lives.

Now I know, when we are hurting, when our lives are falling apart, it is hard not to think of ourselves.  At those times hopefully others are thinking of us.  But one of the reasons God used Joseph is that he paid attention to the people around him and saw when they were troubled.  Joseph was able to minister to the cupbearer and the baker because “When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled” (Gen. 40:6).  He noticed them.  His mind wasn’t preoccupied with self-pity about how he had been falsely accused and thrown into prison.  Rather, his eyes were open and he noticed “that they were troubled.”  It registered.

Then Joseph asked them a question, “Why are your faces downcast today?”  Now, sometimes, when we ask questions like this, people will think we are prying.  But God was with Joseph and He worked in their hearts to open up about their dreams and share their troubled hearts with Joseph.

Who knows, that may happen to you.  So this Sunday, when you see someone standing alone, or when you notice a sad look on their face, don’t turn around and head for your seat or thank God that you aren’t struggling like that.  Rather, go up to them and ask them, “Why is your face so sad? Or worried? Or even happy?”  They may not answer you.  They may not want to answer you.  But they will know that you care and even that may make all the difference in their life that day.

So look at the eyes, the body language, the facial expression.  Pay attention.

Now, in the Greek, this word “consider” is in the present tense, meaning that it calls for continuous consideration.  Not a brief glance, not a monetary thought, but to deeply and for a good while, to think about it.

God is calling me to exert mental energy, to spend time thinking about how I can inspire and motivate you to love (with is an action verb) so that it results in good works.

Let us remember that we are Christians not only for our own sake but also for the sake of others.  No man ever saved his soul who devoted his whole time and energy to saving it; but many a man has saved it by being so concerned for others that he forgot that he himself had a soul to save.  It is easy to drift into a kind of selfish Christianity; but a selfish Christianity is a contradiction in terms.  (William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, Hebrews, 121)

Oswald Chambers has written that a Christian must consciously identify with Jesus Christ’s interests in each of the other people in his life.  Please think about some of the near ones in your life.  How well to you really know them?  Do you know their dreams, their fears, their goals?  Do you know what they are committed to be and do for the Lord and for others?  What are you doing to press into their hearts to find out this vital information?

This, by the way, is what shepherds do.  They know their flock.  They know well the condition of their sheep.  They pay attention to who is present or absent and they pay attention to anything that causes them trouble or fears and anxieties.

Next, we see the goal of biblical fellowship, which is “to stir up one another to love and good works…”  This is what we are to focus our thoughts on, what we are to “consider.”  Our focus on others is to help us understand them well enough (their needs, values and goals) so that we know how to “stir” them up to putting love into action through good deeds.

The word “spur” here, is the Greek word “nnnnngggggg” (sound of a nasal mosquito), which means to “irritate” or “pester,” just like a mosquito does.

Actually, the Greek word is paroxusmos, from which we get paraoxysm, which describes a “sudden attack or violent expression.”

Depending upon the context, it can be positive, “to rouse, incite,” or negative—“to irritate, provoke.”

Last March I was at Leon Rogers’ funeral.  Before the funeral started, I said hello to the person sitting next to me and someone poked me on the shoulder.  It was Frank Rosipal, who used to come to Grace Bible Church, so I said hello to him and to Stokes Herod, sitting to his right.  Then I got another tap.  It was from Reba Rosipal, since I hadn’t already greeted her.

Her husband mentioned then how she was an irritator and joked that she had been for years.  I said, “Well, it’s OK, because Hebrews 10 tells us to irritate one another…to love and good deeds.”

So the idea here is that we irritate, we agitate, we bug the heck out of someone, we become a burr under their saddle, until they get up and act in love with good deeds.

What is in view here is an action which doesn’t rest until it produces something, something good in this case.  It’s like teammates, who push one another to work harder and do better.  We should be each others’ biggest fans and cheerleaders.

Oswald Chambers said, “It is a most disturbing thing to be smitten in the ribs by some provoker from God, by someone who is full of spiritual activity.”  Yes, it can be disturbing, but it has a good aim.  We’re not trying to make people mad, like those little kids on the school bus who sat behind you and picked, picked, picked, until you wanted to turn around and smack them!

No, this is an irritation that turns into something positive—an expression of action-oriented love.

Normally, as in the rest of the New Testament, this is not a pleasant word (for example, “a sharp disagreement”— paroxysmos —came between Paul and Barnabas, Acts 15:39; cf. 1 Corinthians 13:5).  But I believe here our author believes it is something positive, at least something that produces a positive result.

So, with some it may be your example that motivates them to love and good deeds, with others it may be your soft encouragement, but with some it’s going to be that continual needling until they do something.

What we might call “the other side of the coin” is found in verse 25.  There our author calls us to “encourage one another.”  The Greek is parakaleo, which means to come alongside someone to provide a word for them.  It is more gentle than paraxysmos.  While stirring is agitating; encouraging is soothing.  It pictures a preferable future.  One Greek historian used parakaleo to describe a military regiment that had last heart and was utterly dejected.  The general sent a leader to talk to the disheartened ranks and he so enlivened them that their courage was reborn and a body of dispirited men became fit again for heroic action.

The present tense of that participle calls for encouragement to be the believer’s continual practice.

Journalist Robert Maynard related the following story from his childhood in The New York Daily News: As a young boy Maynard was walking to school one day when he came upon an irresistible temptation.  In front of him was a freshly poured piece of gray cement—a piece that had replaced a broken piece of sidewalk.  He immediately stopped and began to scratch his name in it.  Suddenly he became aware that standing over him with a garbage can lid was the biggest stone mason he had ever seen!

Maynard tried to run, but the big man grabbed him and shouted, “Why are you trying to spoil my work?”  Maynard remembers babbling something about just wanting to put his name on the ground.  A remarkable thing happened just then.  The mason released the boy’s arms, his voice softened, and his eyes lost their fire.  Instead, there was now a touch of warmth about the man.  “What’s your name, son?”

“Robert Maynard.”

“Well, Robert Maynard, the sidewalk is no place for your name.  If you want your name on something, you go into that school.  You work hard and you become a lawyer and you hang your shingle out for all the world to see.”

Tears came to Maynard’s eyes, but the mason was not finished yet.  “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A writer, I think.”

Now the mason’s voice burst forth in tones that could be heard all over the schoolyard.  “A writer!  A writer!  Be a writer.  Be a real writer!  Have your name on books, not on this sidewalk.”

Robert Maynard continued to cross the street, paused, and looked back.  The mason was on his knees repairing the damage that Maynard’s scratching had done.  He looked up and saw the young boy watching and repeated, “Be a writer.”

There is amazing power in an encouraging word.  You and I can change a life with a kind word.  Encouragement is a Christian duty.  Lives of provocation through prayer, example, Scripture, and encouragement are gifts the church needs desperately.

So, when you come to church, pray, ‘Lord, help me to know how to stir someone or encourage something to love and good deeds.”  Come to church on the lookout.  Come to church on mission.  Be watching and listening and contemplating how you can encourage someone to a new or deeper expression of love through doing something good for someone else.

Spurring (v. 24) and encouraging (v. 25) are both calling us to speak up.  Don’t be silent.  First, use your eyes and ears to learn how best to move someone to greater love and kindness.  Then speak up.

I have read (and highly recommend) a great book, The Silence of Adam, by Larry Crabb (written primarily for men).  The premise of the book is that in Genesis 3:6, Adam was right there with his wife when she sinned, and he did not open his mouth.  He did or said nothing to prevent her from falling into Satan’s trap.  Likewise, far too many men today tend not to open their mouths and speak from the heart, even to their wives.

Believers can have a profound impact on the lost when they combine a godly life with a loving witness.  We all know of instances of conversions simply because dedicated Christians let their light shine.  On the other hand, we can recall with grief some lost persons who rejected the Word because of the inconsistent lives of professed believers.

In the summer of 1805, a number of Indian chiefs and warriors met in council at Buffalo Creek, New York, to hear a presentation of the Christian message by a Mr. Cram from the Boston Missionary Society.  After the sermon, a response was given by Red Jacket, one of the leading chieftains.  Among other things, the chief said:

Brother, you say that there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit.  If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?  Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?

Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place.  These people are our neighbors.  We are acquainted with them.  We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them.  If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again what you have said.

So speak up—stir up and encourage—but make sure your life backs it up.  Be a good example first, of love and good deeds, then stir up and encourage others to love and good deeds. It is a fact that loving God and man and doing good deeds are more readily caught than taught. To provoke others upward by example is the high road indeed.

So the goal of fellowship is to produce something positive—a response of love that does something good for others.

Love is the motivation—both the evidence of Christ in us and the empowerment of Christ living through us.  Good deeds are the manifestation of what it means to have Christ living in us.  Good deeds is mentioned in a number of New Testament passages, encouraging us that although we are not saved by good works, we are definitely saved for good works (2 Timothy 2:21; Ephesians 2:8-10; 2 Corinthians 9:8; 1 Corinthians 15:10; 1 Peter 2:12; Matthew 5:16).  Believers are to be known for what might be described as consistent aggressive goodness, done however not simply out of a sense of obligation or duty, but out of an unselfish love for both our Lord Jesus and for other people.

How do you empower someone to love?  How do you help them to find more motivation (love) and resources to love that hard husband, that rebellious teenager, that lazy roommate or coworker?

Believing in the promises of God is the root of love.  As you encourage others to have confidence in the promises of God, it helps them fight unbelief in their hearts and helps love to take root there.  This is implied in verse 23: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how to stir up one another to love…”

The object or focus of biblical fellowship is “one another.”  This is the only time our author uses this term (although it is quite common in the NT, used 54 times to express “one another ministry”).  Leon Morris says, “He is speaking of a mutual activity, one in which believers encourage one another, not one where leaders direct the rest as to what they are to do.”

Now, in Hebrews 3:12-13, which we looked at briefly last week, that says the object or focus or target of our fellowship is our brothers.  Again, those verses say…

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Some of you, when you went to college, had an orientation session or maybe a first class in which an instructor or professor said, “Look around you, in a few weeks, 25% of these people won’t be here.”  In other words, dropouts were expected.

The author of Hebrews is warning us of something very, very serious.  It is quote possible that some of us might develop an “evil heart of unbelief” and walk away from God.  We’ve seen it among some Christian celebrities.  Even some pastors.  It could happen right here.

We all need to be stirred up, encouraged and exhorted by each other.  You need MORE than just my exhortation to you.  You need MORE than your Sunday school teachers exhortations.  It requires all of us exhorting all of us to keep us from developing an evil, unbelieving heart.

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 (Jerry Bridges, Trusting God, p. 189).  Our author knew that persecution and suffering lay in their future, if not in their present situation.  They would need fellowship with other believers in order not to fall away.

Here’s some good news and bad news for pastors:

Good News: You baptized seven people today in the river.
Bad News: You lost two of them in the swift current.

Good News: The women’s group voted to send you a get-well card.
Bad News: The vote passed by 31-30.

Good News: The elder board accepted your job description the way you wrote it.
Bad News: They were so inspired by it that they formed a search committee to find someone capable of filling the position.

Good News: The youth of the church came to your house for a visit.
Bad News: It was in the middle of the night and they were armed with toilet paper and shaving cream.

Good News: The Church Council has agreed to send you to the Holy Land for study.
Bad News: They are waiting for war to break out before sending you.

Good News: Church attendance rose dramatically the last three weeks.
Bad News: You were on vacation.

Some of the bad news over the last few years has been a decrease in church attendance.  The fears over COVID and the shut down of all “non-essential” services, which included churches, showed us just how precious fellowship really is.

During that time many people dropped out of going to church altogether.  Most of us pastors became “tele-evangelists” and produced videos of our sermons so that people at home could watch us and stay, at least remotely, connected.

But it wasn’t enough, as we all experienced.  Church is a gathered event.  It involves Christ followers gathering together to teach one another and minister to one another.

What is a shame is that now that COVID is over, some have fallen out of the habit of going to church.  It is easier to stay at home, sit in your LazyBoy recliner with your pajamas on with coffee in hand, allowing your children to play in their rooms while you watch the sermon on tv.

But that isn’t church.  Church is a gathered event.

Now, we all have times when we don’t want to go to church.

The story is told of a wife who woke her husband up for church, but he only groaned and rolled over in bed.  She coaxed him again, urged him, and finally ordered him to get out of bed and go to church.  But he said, “I don’t want to.”  She asked why not and he answered.  “Because it’s boring.  And because they don’t like me there.”  That’s when she got forceful: “That’s not true: It’s not boring and people do like you.  And besides that, you have to go: you’re the pastor!”

Oh, I admit that there are some times that I’ve not wanted to go.  But I don’t come to church just because I’m a pastor.  I come to church because I love Jesus and I love you.  I want to be here.  I want to be with you.  I enjoy teaching you.  I enjoy worshipping with you and serving alongside you.

Getting out of the habit of going to church is nothing new.  Many people have struggled with it because they don’t perceive the real value of it—not until it was taken away during COVID.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote in the shadow of the Third Reich and Hitler’s rise to power, wrote a little book entitled Life Together, which reflects upon the illegal seminary in Finkenwalde and their fellowship together as religious freedom evaporated in Germany.  Here are some of the key insights from this little book.

First, every gathering of the local church is a gift of God’s grace.

Bonhoefer writes:

So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament.

Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. They remember, as the Psalmist did, how they went ‘with the multitude . . . to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday’ (pp.19-20).

Whenever we gather together as a church, we receive a gift from our gracious God. Every gathering of the saints provides a taste of the greater reality of heaven, and we look forward to the day when all the saints will be together with our Lord forever.

Consider Hebrews 12:22-24:

22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Gathering together with our family of faith is a blessing that becomes all the more apparent when the gift is taken away. Let us prize the grace we have been given in our fellowship, and look forward to the day when we can know it again.

Second, we experience the love and presence of God through one another in Christ.

If you feel grief and loneliness, it is only right to feel this sense of loss.  Two-dimensional fellowship through technology is a gift, just as was Paul’s ability to send and receive letters from prison.  However, Paul still longed for face-to-face interaction with his disciples (1 Thess. 2:18; 3:17).

Bonhoeffer elaborates on this as he describes the blessing of physical presence with other believers:

The believer therefore lauds the Creator, the Redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of a brother.  The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.  Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy.  They receive each other’s benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ.  But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians! (p. 20)

It’s like the story about a little girl who can’t get to sleep.  She knocks on the door of her parents’ room and says, “I can’t sleep.”  One parent gets up, goes with the little girl child back to her room, gets her back into bed, and tries to offer reassurance and comfort.  The parent says, “You know that we love you, right?”  “Yes,” nods the child.  “And you know that God loves you, right?” “Yes,” again, says the little girl.   “And you know that God will be right here with you, watching over you all night long.  You know that, too, don’t you?”  The little girl says yes, and smiles as the parent kisses her good night and turns out the light.

A few minutes later, there’s a knock on the parents’ door. “Yes?” they ask.  The little girl explains, “I know God is with me all night long.  But can I still sleep with you?  Right now, I need God with skin on.”

We all need a God with skin on.  And thankfully God provides that.  As we assemble together as the body of Christ on the Lord’s Day, we encounter Christ in his Word and in his people.  We know the love of Christ through one another as we serve as his hands and feet.  Our gatherings are an incredible gift for us to treasure.  It is right for us to desire to be face-to-face with each other.

And so, thirdly, let us thank God for this grace.

In today’s age of individualism, far too many professing Christians see the gathering of the church as an optional activity, and many others are content with “internet church.”  Even for those who are faithful to gather, the weekly blessing of assembling together is easily taken for granted.

Bonhoeffer warns against this, and calls the church to thanksgiving:

It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed.

Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren. (p. 20)

And this brings us to our passage in Hebrews, one that is likely familiar to many evangelical Christians.

19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

The theme of these verses is drawing near to God, but we cannot truly draw near to God without drawing near to our brothers and sisters in Christ.  It is largely through them, as Bonhoeffer attests, that we experience the presence of God and come to know more of His love (cf. Eph. 3:18, “with all the saints”).

People throughout the ages have found reasons not to go to church.  The early church had a fall-off of attendance due to persecution, ostracism, apostasy and arrogance.  Today church attendance is rarely dangerous or costly like that, rather we miss due to laziness or lack of proper priorities.

Some think, “I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian.  In fact, I worship God better in a fishing boat or a deer stand.”

No, you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, but you do have to go to church to be a growing, devoted Christian.  We survive in our spiritual life precisely because we surround ourselves with brothers and sisters in Christ who support us and personally and regularly exhort us and sometimes confront us so that we don’t waver from the truth.

As the evil days surround us, as wickedness and wokeness and the deceitfulness of sin cloud our vision, we so need others to help us remain faithful to Jesus Christ.  Just listen to the warning we saw earlier in Hebrews 3:12-13.

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Any one of us could develop “an evil unbelieving heart” and “fall away from the living God.”  It can happen.  And because it can happen, we need to “exhort one another every day” so that “none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”  Satan is a master of deceit, and he covers the lure in seductive ways so that we think we are getting something good, something that will truly make us happy, but underneath is the hook and we find that the pleasure we thought we were getting is so, so short-lived and the consequences are harsher than we could have imagined.

Without intentional, faith-building togetherness we lose our zeal, drift from God, and become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  We can’t see it.  We are deceived.  If someone doesn’t snatch us (James 5:19; Jude 23), we make shipwreck of our so-called “faith” and perish in unbelief.

By the way, this help doesn’t come merely by showing up at church on Sundays.  Unless you intentionally interact with others, ask for prayer, reveal your burdens and temptations, get involved in studying God’s transformative Word together, you may find that just coming to church on Sunday morning does very little for you.  Take advantage of the opportunities to expose ourselves to the mirror of God’s Word in community where you can tell the truth about yourself and hear the truth about yourself.  Attach yourself to a few people who dare to tell you the truth and who will hold you accountable for seeing yourself as you really are and making changes in your life.  All of these things is what the church fellowship is really about.

Battling unbelief, or to put it positively, fighting the good fight of faith, that is what church is really about.  We live in a world six days a week that encourages unbelief and doubt and the deconstruction of our faith.  The battle isn’t over and believing it is makes us extremely vulnerable to the subtleties of unbelief.  It is a life-long struggle.

At the end of his life, Paul looked back over several decades of being a Christian and says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  He had fought the good fight to keep the faith all his Christian life (2 Tim. 4:7).

And do you know Paul’s secret?  He always surrounded himself with other brothers in Christ.  Although he seems like a gung-ho, Marine, he was not a loner.  Even Seal Team 6 functions as a unit.  Paul didn’t believe that he could successfully live the Christian life on his own.  He knew that he needed others.

So Paul surrounded himself with Barnabas and Silas and Timothy and Luke and Aristarchus and Mark and Ephphras and others.  The one time he was forced to go off by himself to Athens his spirit was almost broken by the overwhelming evil there and he sent immediately for Timothy to join him.  This macho man needed Timothy.

We might mistakenly get the idea that Paul’s faith (and the faith of other ministers today) was never in need of human reinforcement.  But listen to 2 Corinthians 7:5-7:

5 For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn–fighting without and fear within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.

Paul felt overwhelmed.  He had enemies that fought him and he had fears that raged within his mind.  But God comforted Paul.  How?  “by the coming of Titus.”  And in verse 7 you see the ripple effect of eyeball-to-eyeball comforting of one another.  The Corinthians comforted Titus and Titus arrived and comforted Paul.  Paul was an emotional wreck, but Titus came.  Titus gave him a hug, gave him encouragement and prayed for him.  That’s what he needed.

Paul knew that he needed others.  He knew that he could quite possibly shipwreck his faith if he didn’t have others in his life.  You and I need others too.  We need close friends; we need the body of Christ—to help strengthen our faith when fear gets the upper hand.

You see, we are constantly being spiritually formed.  We cannot help it.  But we are either being transformed in a positive direction by truth and grace, or we are being deformed by the world around us in a negative direction through lies and deception.

It’s easy to go with the flow and all too often we find ourselves moving with the flow of the world—into disobedience and sin.  Fortunately, God offers us another flow going in the opposite direction.  The truth is, we are weak; we cannot often stand on our own and go against the flow.  That is why we need a Christian community to surround us and carry us in the direction of positive transformation.

So our author gives us these life-saving, faith-cementing verses:

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.