We come now to the preaching of the word, and so please turn in your copies of God's word to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, and we will read verses 19 to 25. This is God's word. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. So ends the reading of God's word. Let us pray and ask the Lord's blessing upon his preached word. Lord, even as we have sung a moment ago, we ask that you would teach us your ways and not only the ways of your law, but also the ways of your gospel. Show us the richness of grace that you have extended to us through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. ignite our hearts with love for you, build our hearts up in the full assurance of our faith and the confidence of our hope that we might love you and one another all the more by the power of your Holy Spirit. Do this, even now, through this means of grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, today in our society, probably no three words are more abused and misunderstood than these three words, faith, hope, and love. Faith, to most people, is simply the opposite of knowledge and reason. Faith is that thing that you appeal to when you don't really have a good reason for your belief. You've heard of the so-called blind leap of faith, as if you were just blindfolded to leap across a chasm into the darkness. When met with difficulty or if someone asks you a question that's a little hard to answer, you're told to say something like, well, I just have faith. So the saying goes. How is hope understood? Well, hope is typically expressed as a kind of over-optimism. When something bad happens, we hope it will turn out well. The average person hopes to be healthy and wealthy and wise. But this kind of baseless optimistic hope is not a Christian hope. It's not the Christian virtue of hope. Well, we're all aware of how love is mistreated and misused and abused. All kinds of sinful relationships are grounded and based and legitimized on the basis of so-called love. At its core, love really is defined or redefined as whatever makes me happy. Love is not patient, love is not kind, rather love is really a mask for selfishness. All that matters is my happiness, my fulfillment. And so people fall in love, and when it doesn't suit them anymore, they fall out of love, as if love were some kind of blind force, like gravity. But scripture calls us not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And God, through our text this afternoon, has much to teach us. And there are many ways in which our minds must be renewed by the teaching of God's word, and particularly with respect to faith, hope, and love. Well, we are just diving into a passage here in the middle of the book of Hebrews, and so to give some context to our passage, our verses are at the very point at which a major shift takes place in the book of Hebrews. Up until chapter 10, verse 18, the author has been primarily concerned with, not with giving imperatives, not with giving commands, but really with presenting doctrinal truth about who Jesus is, about the glory of Christ, about his work as our great high priest. And then from chapter 10, verse 19 onwards, the letter seems to transition more to application and to exhortation. So it moves from, you might say, telling us about Christ to then telling us how we are to live in light of who Christ is and what he has done for us. Particularly in our passage, we are reminded by the author of how we have access to the presence of God through the work of Christ. And this lays the foundation for his exhortations to us then, to faith, hope, and love. And we need to be reminded of these things, don't we? Because at times we wonder, Will we have the strength to persevere through this particular trial, maybe even through the rest of life, whatever that looks like, when threatened with difficult circumstances, perhaps a life-changing illness, perhaps rejection from friends and family members? Well, we know that life is full of difficulties, and we know that we need to persevere in these three great Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love. But as I said, at times we feel that our faith is weak. We feel at times hopeless and perhaps even loveless. And that's why God in his word not only calls us to persevere in faith, in hope, and in love, but he also gives the strength, the grounds, the grace, the truths that undergird this call to persevere in these things so that we can persevere in these things until he returns. So by way of outline you'll see that that's printed on the back of your bulletins, but first we'll consider these foundational truths that ground the calls to faith, hope and love. And then we'll consider each of these virtues that we're called to in order. Well first we'll consider the foundations of our faith, hope and love. In verses 19 to 21, the author lays down two doctrinal truths that lay a glorious, firm foundation for these virtues and for his exhortations that follow. He writes in verse 19, since we have confidence to enter the holy places. And in verse 21, he says, since we have a great high priest. This language of since we have indicates that both of these blessings are the present possession of the believer. In other words, these are not things that you are being called to do. You are not being called to work in order to attain these things or work in order to keep these things. These are not future things that you do not currently possess. No, these are things, as he says, you have since you have these things. These blessings are your present possession through faith in Christ. Well, we see the first of these great privileges in verse 19, that believers have confidence to enter the holy places Now, what is this reference to the holy places? Well, holy places refers to the holy place and the most holy place in the Old Covenant Temple and Tabernacle. It was that very special and, as we know, very restricted area where God especially abided with his presence among his people. If you wanted to experience the special presence of God, well, that is where God revealed his presence, especially to his people. And so this location of the holy places, these symbolically represented the heavenly presence of God. And so what the author of Hebrews is doing is he's contrasting the bold and free access into God's presence that we have as New Covenant believers. in contrast to the limited and restricted access that all covenant believers had to the holy places. Under the old covenants, the holy of holies was restricted in a number of ways, wasn't it? For starters, not just anyone could enter. Could anyone just stray in there, maybe even accidentally? Well, no. It was only the high priest, and only once a year at that. Contrast that with the great blessing that we have as believers. We have confidence to enter into the holy presence of God. This word for confidence could also be translated as authorization. So the idea is that we have been authorized to enter into a restricted area. And therefore, the confidence we have to enter into God's holy presence is not simply a subjective feeling of confidence that we may feel. For example, you might feel very confident trying to stroll onto the War College to some restricted area. You might feel, I am entitled to this. But you may not have access. And unless you're authorized to enter that place, unless you have a CAC card, you're not going to get on there. They won't let you in. The place is restricted. It doesn't matter how subjectively you feel, you have a right to be there. And so in the same way, our confidence to enter into God's presence isn't a subjective thing, merely a subjective thing that we feel. Well, I feel I have a right to enter that. No, the author of Hebrews says, your confidence to enter is based upon something objectively that Christ has accomplished for you. How are we authorized to enter this place that no Israelite would have ever thought of entering into? Even the high priest entered into that place with trembling. Well, we enter into that place. We are authorized to enter, verse 19 says, by the blood of Jesus. Under the old covenant, sin and impurity kept you from the temple. If you wanted to enter, you needed things like the sacrifice of animals. You needed to go through various rituals and offerings, cleansings. There was much shedding of blood in order to restore your outward purity. In the beginning of this very chapter, the author says that blood sacrifice was a shadow of the good things to come. So at the time, those things were necessary in terms of the old covenant and the Israelites entering into the temple for that fellowship with the Lord. That was necessary at the time, and yet it was also external, and it was insufficient to truly grant access into the full, holy presence of the Lord. Even the high priest of Israel entered into the Holy of Holies, but once a year, and not without the blood of animals. In contrast, we're told that Christ entered once for all into the holy places, not by the means of the blood of goats and calves, but by the means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. What authorizes Christians to approach the holy presence of God is not our good works. It is not the blood of animals. It is not our sacrifices that we offer. No, it is the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ himself. And this reference to the blood of Jesus, of course, is a reference to the very thing that caused that blood to be drawn. It refers to his sacrifice on the cross. It refers to his sin-bearing, atoning sacrifice, at which time he absorbed the wrath of God that we were due for our sin, where he paid the penalty of our sin. And thus, through Christ's great sacrifice, he removed all of the hindrances for us to enter God's presence. He answered God's righteous wrath. He silenced the law's harsh demands. He dealt with our separating sin, and he broke down the partition. He brought reconciliation between God and man. This is what gives us confident and authorized access into God's holy presence. Well, this special access to God through Christ is further described in verse 20 as a new and living way. Well, it's new in the sense that it's replaced the old. It's a living way in the sense that this is the way of life. This is the way of eternal life. Life comes, again, not merely through the sacrifice of animals. Life doesn't come through our own seemingly meritorious works. Rather, it comes through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The author continues to load up the Old Testament imagery and symbolism, stating in verse 20 that the way open is through the curtain, that is through his flesh. You see, the holy place was separated from the outside courts, and the holy place was separated from the most holy place with another curtain. And you read through the ornate descriptions of these heavy curtains with all of their cloth and the imagery of the cherubim. And for the priest to enter through these curtains, he'd have to push back these heavy curtains to make his way through. But now the author says that that curtain has been torn from top to bottom. And of course, here he is applying this to Jesus himself, how Jesus' flesh has been torn and ripped open, as it were, so that we may enter not through a curtain, that had the terrifying imagery of the cherubim, those same angels who stood with fiery swords barring Adam and Eve from re-entering to the garden. Those have been removed. God's justice has been satisfied. Now we enter, not through a terrifying curtain with fiery angels and their swords, but now through the torn body of the Lord Jesus Christ. This first great foundational blessing is that we have access to God through Christ. And this is tied closely with the second blessing in verse 21, since we have a great priest over the house of God. The second great blessing we have as believers is that we have Christ as our great priest. No longer are we represented by a son of Aaron who will live and die and be replaced by another son of Aaron. No, now we have Christ himself, the son of God, who lives to make intercession for us. So this first blessing points to the work of Christ, his past work as the sacrifice. And now this reference to Christ as our great priest points to his ongoing continual work of intercession for us. And therefore, Christian, you not only have access to God through Christ, you also have Christ himself as your savior, as your sacrifice, as your great priest and intercessor of your soul. Well, just like the foundation to a building, the author here has laid these two great promises and blessings for us to serve as the foundations for the exhortations that follow. Well, secondly then, since we have Christ and his benefits, let us persevere in faith. Having laid this foundation, the author now begins his exhortations in verses 22 to 25. He writes in verse 22, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. The phrase, draw near to God, is language used of the Old Testament and the Old Covenant to describe how the priests were to draw near to God in Old Covenant worship. For example, in Leviticus 9, verse 7, Aaron's sons are told to draw near. to the altar to make sacrifices to God. So the language of drawing near is language of worship. Just as we began our worship service with the call to worship, it's a call to draw near to the Lord. But in the Old Testament, this call to draw near was particularly given to the priestly class who offered various blood sacrifices for sin. But now through Christ, We offer sacrifices of prayer and praise and thanksgiving. Like the priests of old, believers today draw near to God through our own priestly service to him. However, in this new and living way, it's not only priests, but all believers who participate in the worship of God. Access to God's presence is no longer restricted to a particular class of people or even to a particular place like a temple. No, now we worship. in spirit and in truth, not confined to this mountain or that mountain, but wherever believers gather to worship the Lord. So we have been called to draw near like the priests of old. Well next, we're told how we draw near. Verse 22 tells us we 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. We draw near with a true heart. A true heart is a believing heart. It's a heart of faith. And so we approach God from hearts of faith, trusting and believing in what Christ has done to draw us near to God. And we can draw near in faith because he says that our hearts have been sprinkled and our bodies washed. You see, when God calls us to worship as his believers, he not only invites us into his presence, but he also makes us fit to enter that presence. Because he says that our hearts have been sprinkled. This is an allusion to the sprinkling of the blood of animals that would restore ritual purity to the Israelites under the Old Covenant. However, this sprinkling only dealt with external and outward purity. It could not cleanse the conscience of the worshiper. However, in contrast, under the new covenant, not only our bodies, but our hearts have been sprinkled clean and purified through the cleansing, regenerating, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Our stone-cold hearts that once would balk at the thought of spending our Sundays worshiping the Lord now We don't want to do anything else. We delight to hear the call to worship, to be beckoned into God's presence, to sing his praises with fellow believers, to hear even our little ones lisp his name in praise. We are delighted to see believers baptized. We consider nothing greater than to partake of the Lord's Supper week by week to experience the blessing of Christ's promised presence. We've had our hearts sprinkled and changed. And not only that, but the author of Hebrews says, our bodies have been washed with pure water. And this is another Old Covenant allusion. It's an allusion to the many washings. We read of some of those earlier. There were these large bronze basins in which the sons of Aaron would be washed and prepared for worship. Well, in the New Covenant, we have a washing, don't we? The washing of baptism. Baptism is an outward and visible sign of an internal reality. The outward washing of baptism of our bodies points to that internal change of heart that has been worked by the Holy Spirit. And so essentially, the author of Hebrews is saying, when you draw near to God in worship, remember your baptism. Remember your baptism. If you have true faith and you have been baptized as a believer, then remember your baptism and all that it signifies. It is a sign to you from God that you belong to him. Not only in your baptism did you vow yourself to God, but in your baptism, God vowed himself to you through faith. He placed his cryonim upon you, his seal on your soul. In a moment, we will have the joy of witnessing Sabrina's baptism. And this is something that she can remember for the rest of her days sojourning on this earth. And it can be something that will continue to strengthen her faith as she remembers God's promise to her through baptism. And so to summarize, the believer can draw near in the full assurance of faith because of the internal work of the spirit and the external sign of baptism. Beloved, since God has removed all barriers and all hindrances to enter His presence, what now prevents you from drawing near to Him in worship? Perhaps even this afternoon you feel hindered or restricted in some kind of way from entering God's presence. Maybe even now your mind is plagued because perhaps you feel like you haven't had a good enough week in order to worship God. How could I approach God when I didn't read my Bible enough this week as I promised God I would? Or I didn't pray enough this week. Or maybe I've sinned this week. What am I to do? How? Can I approach God? Maybe your mind recalls past sins that you've long since confessed and repented of before God, and you feel that that's a hindrance, even now, to worshiping the Lord with other believers. Well, dear friends, in those times, remember Christ's work for you and Christ's work in you. If your faith is in Christ, then you can have full assurance that your heart is sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. Confess your sins, repent of your sins, and know that through Christ they have been paid for by his blood. And remember, the basis for approaching Him, the basis for approaching the Lord's Supper is not how good of a week you had. It is not how many good works you performed. It is not based on your performance at all. Rather, you were invited to draw near because of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the object and focus of your faith. As our confession says, Saving faith is receiving and resting in Christ alone for salvation. Our faith is a rich faith. It's a full faith. It is a faith not in faith itself. It is not an empty faith or a conjecture. No, it is a faith that is firmly fixed and grasps and holds the Lord Jesus Christ and his promises. And so, dear Christian, persevere in faith. Draw near to God in faith. Exercise your privilege. of drawing near in worship to God through Jesus Christ. Well, thirdly, since we have Christ and his benefits, let us persevere in hope. Well, in our culture, hope is commonly understood as feeling optimistic that something good will eventually happen. It's a presumptuous hope. For example, a student might hope to do well on an exam. Maybe she didn't even study for the exam, but she still hopes it will go well. She's optimistic about it. The man who buys a lottery ticket hopes to win millions of dollars. It's a kind of a cross your fingers and hope for the best kind of thing. It's a hope that is empty and substanceless. It's like a balloon that's expanded huge, but it's ultimately empty. There's nothing in it. a simple prick, and it's popped, and it's gone. There's nothing to show for it. Well, that is not Christian hope. Christian hope is not wishful thinking, nor is it merely optimism. One author helpfully defines hope as a spirit-given virtue enabling us to joyfully expect the promises of God. So hope is future-oriented. It expects the fulfillment of God's promises. What's the difference between faith and hope? Well, it can be helpful to think of it this way. Faith takes hold of and believes God's promises in the present, and hope is more future-oriented. It looks forward and it expects the fulfillment of these promises, and this is the Christian hope, a confident expectation of God's promises. Well, one of the recurring exhortations of the book of Hebrews is to hold fast. We read it earlier in our scripture reading or in our call to worship. And now, once again, we have the call in verse 23 to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. What is this confession of our hope? Well, in the previous verse, the author alluded to baptism. And so likely, this is the confession, the verbal expression of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in what he has done. And thus, the confession of our hope is really another way of saying the content of our hope. By faith, we trust in Christ and thus have access to draw near to God now in the present. And as we think of hope as a future-oriented thing, Hope looks ahead to the expectation of all of those promises. And thus, in hope, we long for and we expect a future promised glory where we will draw near to God in sinless worship, where we will no longer even confess sins because we will not commit sins. Well, that is the day we hope for, the day we draw near to the Lord in the new heavens and the new earth after Christ returns. And if you are a Christian, then you have this hope and you must hold fast to this hope without wavering. The call to be without wavering has the sense of not being moved. To waver is kind of the idea of bending back and forth, it's being tossed about to and fro. Think of the leaves that are now starting to litter the ground and how a simple blow of wind, a puff of wind is enough to take these leaves up in a swirl in the air. Well, the author of Hebrews says, don't be like that. Instead, have a hope that is grounded in something. Don't be tossed about to and fro, but be firmly planted in the confession of your hope. Sometimes when trials arise in life it can feel like you're lost in a deep thick fog. We had a fog like that the other night, well not quite like that, it wasn't that bad but We had a fog somewhat like it. But you know what it's like to be in a thick fog where you can, you almost put your hand out far enough and you can't see. It's terrifying to drive, especially when it's dark. And life can feel like that sometimes. And the way forward seems uncertain, unsure, maybe even impossible. And one wonders in those moments how life will go on. How can I even take a step forward? What will the future be? Is there a future? The future itself seems in a word. Hopeless. Well, in times like that, how do we hold fast to the confession of our hope? How are we to persevere in hope when we find ourselves in seemingly hopeless, futureless situations? Is it by white-knuckling and holding fast and just getting our way through? Well, look again at verse 23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Dear believer, you can persevere in hope because Christ who promises is faithful. You will feel hopeless at times, or you will be tempted to feel hopeless at times, but you will never truly be in a hopeless situation because Christ has promised, and he is faithful. You see, our hope is not fueled by optimism. Our hope is not fueled by the power of positive thinking. Our hope is anchored in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our hope is fueled by His promises. It's based on the certainty of His faithfulness. And so, beloved, you can hold fast to the confession of your hope with that wavering, because Christ will faithfully hold fast to His promises to you. His faithfulness secures and guarantees the confession of your hope. And so, in the face of the opposition that comes from the world, the flesh, and the devil, and all the trials, and all the challenges that they spit at us, hold fast, hope in the promises of the gospel, because he who promised is faithful. Well, finally, since we have Christ and his benefits, let us persevere in love. The author now has exhorted us to draw near in faith, to hold fast in hope, and now thirdly he calls us to love one another. Look at verse 24. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together. This word for stirring up is an interesting word choice, probably many of us wouldn't have thought to use a word like this. The only other time that this occurs in the New Testament is when there is an argument between Paul and Barnabas over whether or not to take John Mark on their missionary journey. So there's a sharp disagreement, there's a provocation that happens. And here, the author of Hebrews uses this word. Of course, here in Hebrews, he's using it in a positive sense, but that is almost a sense behind stirring up. It's provoking one another to love and good works. It's maybe not leaving each other alone, but to stir one another on, to be active in those things. Love and good works, of course, are evidences of a true and lively faith. If we have faith, James tells us, then we have works, and we ought to love one another. These are things that should be expressed by the one who draws near in faith and holds fast to hope. Well, how do we stir one another up? Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. Well, apparently in the early church, there were some who were neglecting to meet for worship. We don't know why. It may have been for fear of persecution. It may have been for reasons of selfishness. But regardless of the reasons, their neglect of corporate worship was a failure to love. The primary way we love one another and consider one another is by meeting together for worship. We considered this a few weeks ago in some of our teaching sessions, but it's easy to mistakenly think of attendance at the worship service as only being of a benefit to my soul and what I get out of it and what it does for me and who spoke to me today and who invited me to their house and that sort of thing. And certainly we should personally benefit from a worship service and from church membership. But it's interesting here that the author exhorts us not to neglect meeting together for the benefit of one another. The kind of love that Christ calls us to runs so opposite to the love of the world. How would you define the world's love? The world's love is very self-focused, self-motivated, self-indulgent. It's often what is best for me. I'm not in love with my spouse anymore. Why? They don't make me happy. It's self-focused. But Christian love is other-focused. It's outward-focused. And it's concerned clearly with the welfare of others. As Christ's local body here, we have a responsibility to gather with one another, even as we are doing this morning, to worship and to stir one another up to love and good works. The New Testament knows nothing of a lone ranger Christianity or even an online Christianity. Gathering together is a necessary aspect of our perseverance in Christian love. We need one another in order to stir one another up to this love and good works. Thus, if we are to persevere in love, in Christian love, we need one another. This language of stirring one another up, as I said, is closely tied or another connotation of this word is kind of provocation. It implies that it means more than simply coming to a building and sitting through a service and being cordial to one another and smiling and shaking hands and then bolting out the door. If we are to stir one another up to love and good works, it implies that we know each other and we're to some extent in each other's lives. Certainly not in an obnoxious or uninvited kind of way or an intrusive way, but certainly in a way where we know enough about each other where we can be of encouragement. That's how we learn to bear one another's burdens, by first learning each other. So we learn to forgive one another and all of the other one another commands. Well, finally, at the end of verse 25, the author reinforces this exhortation together with the words, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. What is the day? What day is this that's drawing near, that's coming close? You know, we have been called to draw near to God. We're also told that there is a day that is drawing near to us. Well, throughout scripture, the day is a reference to the final day, the day of final judgment when Christ returns to gather his elect and judge the living and the dead. And what's interesting is that the word the author here used for meeting together is also used in only one other place in the New Testament, and that's in 2 Thessalonians. And it's also in reference to the gathering of the church on the last day when Christ returns. And so by combining these two terms, the author is drawing a connection between our present assembly here and now and the final gathering, the final assembly of all of the saints on the last day when Christ returns. In other words, those who presently assemble now and draw near to God by faith are partaking of the same heavenly realities that will come in all fullness on the last day when Christ returns. Gathered believers presently experience the blessings of the new creation through corporate worship. And this is why we must not neglect corporate worship. Or to put it positively, this is why our hearts ought to be nurtured to love corporate worship and all of the elements that are involved. In worship, we have access to enter God's special presence. In worship, we have a foretaste of our future and certain sinless eternity in the presence of God. Through worship, God strengthens your faith, your hope, and your love. so that you are able to persevere. And so finally, beloved, in light of these exhortations, may we take to heart this call to worship, that we might persevere in faith, hope, and love. For our faith is grounded in Jesus' completed work. Our hope is anchored in his promises. and our love is fostered and fueled in the assembling of his church. Let us therefore not waver in our faith, but continually draw near to God with full assurance. Let us not lose hope, even when trials cloud our vision, for he who promises is faithful. And let us not grow weary in loving and serving the Lord and one another, knowing that the day of the Lord is fast approaching. May God grant us perseverance. until such a time as he returns or takes us to himself, then our faith will become sight, our hope will be fulfilled, and then we will enjoy the loving presence of our triune God forever. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Holy Word, which makes us wise to salvation. We thank you for your great love for us through Jesus Christ, who has opened a new and living way that we might draw near to you. We ask that by your Spirit, you would nourish our faith and every other virtue in us, that we might persevere until the end. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, at this time, please do