Hebrews: A Word of Exhortation | Hebrews 13:22-25
Brian Hedges | March 30, 2025
I want to invite you to turn in Scripture this morning to Hebrews 13. We’re going to be reading together verses 22-25.
In recent decades, the American church has witnessed an unprecedented shift in our culture. Researchers estimate that 40 million people—that’s one in eight Americans—have stopped attending church in the last twenty-five years. This is the fastest and the largest religious shift ever seen in American history.
There are many reasons why people have left and are leaving. The research shows some leave because of doubts about Christianity, intellectual doubts about the faith. Others have left because of disillusionment with the church. They’ve been hurt by the church. Some have simply drifted away; this happened to some degree in 2020 during the COVID era, when people just quit coming to church. Others have left for other reasons.
This phenomenon, which has been called “the great de-churching” in a book of that title by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, is something that all of us are encountering. We all have friends or family members or loved ones who once were professing faith in Christ, once regular in church attendance, and no longer are at this point.
I’ve mentioned this many times—this statistic, this book—many times in this series through Hebrews, because the letter to Hebrews was written to people who were being tempted to turn away from faith in Christ, not towards atheism, but rather to retreat into the forms of Old Testament worship. They were facing pressure because of their faith in Christ. It was hard to be a Christian in the first century in that culture, and because of that pressure, they were tempted to retreat. We’re facing different pressures today, but the temptation is essentially the same, the temptation to turn away from faith in Christ and to retreat into a partial if not a total apostasy.
The question that the letter to the Hebrews was written to address is this: Is it really worth it to follow Jesus, to stay firm in the faith and to continue following Jesus even when it’s difficult? Is Jesus really better?
The resounding answer of this letter is yes, Jesus is better, and he is worthy of our faith and of our faithfulness and of continuing in the faith.
We’ve been looking at this letter together for thirty-two sermons now, since October of 2023. We’ve done this in four different segments as we’ve worked chapter by chapter through this letter. Today, we finally come to the end, the last several verses of Hebrews, Hebrews 13:22-25. I want to begin by reading this passage and just make a few brief comments on the ending of the letter, and then really treat this sermon as something like a summary of the primary lessons of this letter to the Hebrews, things that I hope each one of us will walk away with as we conclude this series through Hebrews and some lessons for us as a church as we have worked through this letter together. Let’s begin by reading Hebrews 13:22-25. This is God’s word. It says,
“I appeal to you, brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon. Greet all your leaders and all the saints. Those who come from Italy send you greetings. Grace be with all of you.”
This is God’s Word.
Now, before I give you the outline this morning, I just want to make some brief observations about these verses. This won’t take long, but it’s important to just note some of the features of this text. These are verses that we tend to pass over when we read them. We’re coming to the end of the letter, the main argument letter seems to be behind us, and it’s easy to pass over these verses and verses like these without paying attention to what’s there.
I want you to just note the news of greetings in verses 23-24. That’s important. Those aren’t throwaway verses; those are there for a reason. They remind us that this was a real letter, written by a real person to real people, at a point in time in history. There’s reference to Timothy, a familiar character from the New Testament, and also to Italy. It just reminds us that the Bible was not written in a vacuum. God’s word comes to us out of history, and it’s always important for us to pay attention to the historical situation of that original author and his original readers when we’re reading through a letter. We’ve tried to do that as we’ve worked through Hebrews.
You also notice here the final benediction of verse 25, “Grace be with all of you,” or, “Grace be with you all.” Again, these are not throwaway words. This is similar to how Paul ends all of his letters, with the words “grace to you” or “grace be with you.” As I learned from John Piper many years ago when I was reading his book Future Grace, these words that conclude the end of these New Testament letters are there to remind us that grace is ready to flow to us every time we take up the inspired Scriptures to read them.
There’s a reason why the authors end the letters in this way, because they are expecting that as God’s people read God’s word in the assembled congregation, that they will receive grace, that the word of God is a means of grace to them. How true this is of Hebrews. And though today is the last message in this particular series, I hope that you will never quit reading this letter. You should make this part of your regular diet, at least once a year as you are reading through the Scriptures and reading through the whole of the New Testament, especially, I hope that you will read this letter to the Hebrews. It is unique in the New Testament. There’s no other book quite like it. It’s what R. C. Sproul called one of his “desert island” books. If he was only going to have a few books of the Bible to take on a desert island, Hebrews would be one of them. And we need this letter. There’s grace for us in this letter, which holds out for us the supremacy of Jesus Christ in his glorious person and his work.
Then I want you to notice these words in verse 22, how the author calls this letter “a word of exhortation.” A word of exhortation. That’s a phrase that appears one other time in the New Testament, in Acts 13:15, where Paul is invited to give a sermon in a synagogue, and it is called a word of exhortation or a word of encouragement. And that has led many New Testament scholars to say that the letter to the Hebrews is not just a letter, it’s a sermon. It’s actually an example of what a New Testament sermon would have been like. When you read through this letter, it has a very sermonic feel to it. It’s a sermon that is complete with explanation, illustration, and application. All sermons need to have those components in them.
In fact, Hebrews is a letter or sermon that switches back and forth between exposition of Old Testament Scriptures, in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ, followed by exhortations to the believers, application to the hearts and the lives of the believers to whom it was written.
So it shows us how there is this balance in Scripture of truth and application. There’s both theology and there’s exhortation, and we need both of those things. We need them balanced and we need them combined together, just as the letter to the Hebrews combines them.
I want to focus on that phrase “word of exhortation” and really take that as our launching point as we consider now five of the primary exhortations from this letter to the Hebrews. Again, this is something of a summary of what we have seen in the weeks and months as we’ve been working through this letter together.
I think these exhortations suggest for us five practices or five disciplines that should characterize each one of us as believers and should characterize us together as a church. And indeed, these are the disciplines, the practices that will preserve us in the faith and that will protect us from the danger of apostasy and drifting away from Christ and from his people.
So here are the five exhortations. I’ll give these to you in the words of Hebrews, and then also the five disciplines that I think they point us to.
The exhortations are hold fast, pay attention, draw near, encourage one another, and fix your eyes on Jesus. These suggest for us the disciplines of endurance, listening, worship, community, and faith. Let’s work through each one of these in turn.
1. Hold Fast: The Discipline of Endurance
Hebrews repeatedly calls believers to hold fast to Christ using just those words. We already saw this in the assurance of pardon this morning from Hebrews 4:14. “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.”
There on the screen you can see some of the other verses that use this language. Hebrews 3:6 speaks of holding fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope. Hebrews 6:18 says, “Hold fast to the hope set before us,” and Hebrews 10:23, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”
That language, the language of holding fast, as well as the language of endurance also found in this letter, reminds us that the Christian life is not about a one-time decision, it is about an enduring faith. It reminds us that real faith is not a fleeting emotional experience, but it is an abiding trust in Jesus Christ. This kind of faith requires perseverance, because following Jesus—let’s face it—is not always easy. We face trials, we face doubts, we face hardships along the way. But true faith is known by its continuance. True faith doesn’t turn back when the path becomes difficult. It presses forward, because it believes that Jesus is worth it.
Probably a dozen times in this series I’ve tried to illustrate from that great classic from John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. It’s that great story of Christian and his journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, and the various temptations and trials and battles that he faces along the way. In every setback that Christian faces, he still presses on. He still perseveres.
There’s a particular scene when he comes to the base of this high, difficult mountain. It’s called Hill Difficulty. It’s a very steep mountain. It’s going to be an arduous climb, and there’s actually the temptation to take an easier path. There’s a path to the left, there’s a path to the right, but both of those paths will take him off of the straight and narrow road which leads to the Celestial City, the way of life. So, rather than avoiding the difficult mountain, Christian drinks from a spring of water at the base of the hill, he refreshes himself from that spring, and he starts to climb up. As he climbs, he says these words, written in a poetic form. He says,
“This hill, though high, I covet to ascend.
The difficulty will not me offend,
For I perceive the way of life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart! Let’s neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.”
Now I know the language is quaint, but that little exhortation he makes to himself, “Pluck up, heart! Don’t faint, don’t fear; keep going, stay in the way of life,” that’s exactly what Hebrews is calling us to: to not grow weary, to not grow fainthearted, but to hold fast and to endure. That’s the message of this letter.
The road is hard, but going back is not an option, so Hebrews exhorts us to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end, to not be sluggish, but to be imitators of those who, through faith and endurance, inherit the promises (Hebrews 6:11-12).
Listen, life is difficult, and for some of you, right now, today, you feel life pressing in on you. The temptation is to begin to drift from an earnest faith in Jesus Christ. Maybe you’re facing uncertainty in your job. Maybe it’s a strained marriage. Maybe it’s spiritual dryness. But holding fast means not that you deny the difficulty, but it means that you cling to Jesus in the middle of it.
For example, for the student who is wrestling with doubt, the young person who is struggling with your faith, you lean into those questions. You study, you pray, you seek out answers, but you don’t let doubt isolate you. Instead, you climb that steep mountain, and you do so with the help of others as you share those questions, you work through those questions, and you work yourself through those to a more settled faith in Jesus Christ.
Or for the weary worker who is just exhausted with the daily grind, you remember that faithfulness in small things matters to God, and that even the mundane tasks that we are engaged in day by day can be offered up to God as a part of our obedience, a part of our worship, as we seek to be salt and light in the world around us.
Or think of the stay-at-home mom who feels unseen and invisible to the world. Remember that God sees you in those unseen moments. He sees your perseverance, and even though the endurance this calls for is not glamorous, even though it’s hard, your labor of love is not in vain. You also are called to hold fast, to endure, to be faithful to what God has called you to do.
All of us, whatever our circumstances—and think of your own specific circumstances this morning—all of us have a race to run, and it’s a race that requires endurance. All of us are called to hold fast.
2. Pay Attention: The Discipline of Listening
The second exhortation of this letter is pay attention. Pay attention. Here we have the discipline of listening.
Now, “pay attention” are exactly the words that are used in Hebrews 2:1. “Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it.”
Here in particular the author is calling his readers to pay attention to the gospel, to pay attention to the good news, so that they don’t drift away from that. It recalls the opening verses of this letter, Hebrews 1:1-2, which says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.” It’s a reminder to us that God’s fullest and final revelation of Himself is in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ. The author is saying, “Pay attention. Listen. Don’t drift away from that gospel word.”
We can add to that the emphasis throughout this letter on how the Spirit speaks to the present readers through the Old Testament Scriptures. I think I commented on this just briefly as we were working through some of these passages, but just note this pattern. Hebrews 3:7: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear his voice…” quoting from Psalm 95.
Or Hebrews 9:8: “By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet open as long as the first section is still standing.” It’s referring to the rituals surrounding the day of atonement in Leviticus 16.
Or this one, Hebrews 10:15: “And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us,” and then he quotes from the prophet Jeremiah.
Now, my focus here is not even on the specifics that are being communicated by those Old Testament passages, but just the pattern. The Spirit says, the Spirit indicates, the Spirit bears witness. All of those are present tense verbs. So the author is saying that the Spirit is now speaking, the Spirit is now communicating, the Spirit is now bearing witness, and he’s doing so through the Old Testament Scriptures. No wonder, then, that we are exhorted in Hebrews 12:25, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.” It’s a call to listen. It’s a call to pay attention to God’s word, to the Scriptures, to the voice of the Spirit, to the gospel.
Again, brothers and sisters, we need to hear this today, because we live in a world that is full of distractions that are eroding our focus. Phones constantly buzz with notifications. Social media algorithms are designed to keep you scrolling. Do you know that? They want you to stay on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever it is. It’s a black hole for attention. News cycles constantly demand our attention with crisis after crisis. The sheer volume of information coming at us at any given moment is overwhelming, and if we are not careful, we will spend our days consumed with the urgent while we neglect what is most important.
That’s why we have to learn to pay attention to God’s voice and to the Scriptures; otherwise, we drift. Otherwise, we lose our focus. Otherwise, our hearts begin to harden as we ignore the voice of the Spirit speaking through the word of God.
Now listen, this doesn’t happen in one dramatic moment. It happens through the slow drift of our attention and focus from the gospel. This is a problem that we’re facing all of the time.
There’s a book written a few years ago by Winifred Gallagher called Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. And she describes how attention works. She says, “At any one moment, your world contains too much information. Your attentional system selects a certain chunk, which gets valuable cerebral real estate and therefore the chance to affect your behavior.”
Now just think about the analogy here. I think this is helpful. It’s like real estate in your brain. That’s what cerebral real estate is. Just like any piece of property, any piece of real estate, there’s only so much you can build on it, and then the capacity is maxed out. What she’s saying is that your mind is like that. Your brain is like that. It only has so much capacity, so much attention, so much ability to focus. If you build the wrong things with that real estate, then it affects your ability to focus on the more important things. What you pay attention to will shape you, and if you give all of your focus to social media or entertainment or the news cycle, your spiritual life will suffer. So we need to learn this discipline of listening, of paying attention.
That means simple things. It means, for one, be in God’s word regularly. Be in God’s word daily. Even if it’s just a few verses a day or a chapter a day, let Scripture have your attention as you listen to the voice of God speaking to you through the word of God.
It also means that we engage in active listening in worship and when we are gathered together to study God’s word; not just in the sermon, but including that, but also in classes and in groups, when we’re in these smaller gatherings of people and we’re opening Scripture together. We need to do so with our attention engaged, expecting the Lord to speak to us and to teach us and to help us.
Then, you might try this as a simple takeaway. Cut one distraction from your life to make more room for your focus and your attention to be on the things of God. Similar to a budget, if you find that you’re maybe a little over-extended and the finances aren’t quite reaching, you look at your budget and you look for a category to trim down. Maybe you say, “Okay, we’re not going to eat out,” or, “We’re going to try to spend less money on gas and be more conservative in our trips,” and so on. You’re looking for a category where you can extend some margin financially. You have to do the same thing with your attention. You have to extend the margin. You do that by cutting something, something that you’re presently allowing to take a lot of your attention, you cut that. You cut it out, and then you replace that with focused attention on something that’s actually going to benefit you in your spiritual life. This is the discipline of listening, of paying attention. Because God is speaking. God is speaking—don’t miss this! God is speaking presently through his word. The voice of the Spirit is there. The question is whether we will listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church.
3. Draw Near: The Discipline of Worship and Prayer
So hold fast, pay attention, and then number three, draw near. Draw near. This is the discipline of worship, and I include within this the discipline of prayer. So both personal prayer and worship and also corporate prayer and worship together.
The key phrase here is “draw near,” and it’s really essential to the argument of this letter. The author states very clearly that the old covenant was not able to perfect the consciences of those who drew near to God (Hebrews 10:1), but as new covenant believers, we have this privileged access into the presence of God, and we can draw near to him through Jesus Christ and his finished work. We can do that with great boldness, great confidence, great assurance.
Here are some of the key verses.
Hebrews 7:25: “Christ is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Christ our priest is the one who opens the way, and it’s through his ongoing intercession for the people of God that we draw near to God. We draw near through Christ.
Hebrews 10:22: “Let us draw near with a true heart [or a sincere heart] in full assurance of faith.” So we draw near in sincerity.
Hebrews 11:6: “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” So we draw near in faith.
Then Hebrews 4:16. Again, this was in our call to worship. “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.” So we draw near to the Lord with great confidence as we come to his throne.
You might just think of how you would respond if you had an opportunity to have unrestricted access to someone you greatly admire. Maybe you were invited to a one-on-one dinner with your favorite author, or maybe you were given a personal backstage pass to meet your favorite musician. Or what I was thinking about this week was what it would be like to play a round of golf with Scottie Scheffler. Right? He’s the best golfer in the world. I’ve been watching him the last few days, playing a tournament down in Texas. Just incredible. He’s also a Christian, just a wonderful guy. It would be so cool to get to play around with Scottie Scheffler.
Now, if that opportunity was there, I would move heaven and earth to make that happen. It’s not likely to happen, but I would make it happen if it could happen. And you would do the same if it was somebody you admired, some kind of privileged access that you know, “Not everybody gets this, but I have this opportunity.” You would take advantage of that.
Brothers and sisters, do you realize that we have privileged access to the God of the universe, the one who created us, and who knows us, and who loves us? We have access into his presence through the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is a blood-bought privilege, given to us because of what Christ has done for us; and yet, how often do we neglect that privilege?
Hebrews invites us to draw near to God in worship. And that means that privately we should do this, as we make space in our lives for personal fellowship with God, personal communion with the Lord. We seek out his presence, knowing that he desires this, he wants this. God wants to spend time with you.
Then we also make space for this in our lives in terms of corporate worship, where we do not treat gathering with God’s people as an optional extra. Rather, it’s core to what it means to be a follower of Jesus as we follow him together in community and we worship him together.
4. Encourage One Another: The Discipline of Community
That leads to the fourth exhortation, the fourth discipline. The exhortation: encourage one another. It’s the discipline of community.
I want to give you two passages of Scripture for this one, Hebrews 10:24-25, and then Hebrews 3:12-13.
Hebrews 10 says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” I would like that better if it said, “Let us consider one another.” “One another” is the direct object of the verb. So it’s, “Let us consider one another, 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, consider one another, encourage one another, and then there’s another of these “one another commands” in Hebrews 3. It’s one of the great warnings in this letter against apostasy, but it’s a warning that’s given to the community. Notice this in Hebrews 3:12.
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 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.”
Consider one another, encourage one another, exhort one another. Еhese are just three of probably two dozen or so “one another” commands that are found in the New Testament Scriptures. Every time you read one of those, it is a fresh call to be committed to the church, to be committed to what I’m calling here the discipline of community. You need the church. You and I need the church. Isolation breeds spiritual weakness.
I’ve used the illustration before; it’s like taking a coal out of the fire. You isolate the coal from the other coals, it will begin to grow cold; but if you keep that coal burning with the whole heap of coals, they burn together. In the same way, our hearts grow cold when we are isolated from other believers or when we withdraw or pull away from worship. You need the church.
But not only that, the church needs you. The church needs your gifts, your presence, your encouragement to strengthen others. A church without all of its members is like a body that’s missing a limb. It’s incomplete. How important it is to emphasize this on a membership Sunday, where we have almost a dozen people joining our church fellowship today between the two services. We need one another! We need those who are joining and becoming a part of the body of Christ here in this official capacity because it’s a part of our mutual commitment to one another.
Wherever you are in your Christian life, wherever you are in your search for a church, you need the church. You need a body of believers that you are committed to and that is committed to you, that will help you to live the life of faith.
When we commit ourselves to the church in this way, it’s important for us to have the right expectations. I would say, on one hand, our expectations tend to be too low in some ways, but also too high in others.
In some ways, our expectations are too low. We are not expecting everything that God has promised to do through the church. Did you know that Christ has promised to build the church? Did you know that the Spirit of God indwells the church and that God uses the church as a means of grace in our lives, that he uses our brothers and our sisters to help us, not just to teach us and give us some information, but actually to help us stay in the faith? That’s what Hebrews is saying! Eternal security is a community project, to quote John Piper. We need one another because it’s one of the means that God helps us to continue on with Christ.
We should expect God to be working in our lives in just that way through the body of Christ. We should expect that the prayers and the encouragement and the exhortation and even the admonition and the correction of others in our lives is necessary and helpful and good for us.
I think sometimes our expectations are too low. You know, we expect to go, we expect maybe to learn a little bit. “Here’s something I haven’t heard before.” Maybe we’ll be entertained, enjoy seeing some friends, but we’re not expecting God to speak. We’re not expecting the Spirit to work. We’re not expecting our lives to be deeply challenged in just the way that God wants to work through the church. Our expectations are too low.
On the other hand, it may be your expectations are too high. Listen, if you are expecting perfect people or a perfect pastor or perfect elders or an ideal small group, you are going to be disappointed, because there isn’t such a thing. There is no perfect church, and there are no perfect people. Expecting that kind of perfection in the Christian community is setting you up for disappointment.
Years ago, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together, one of the best little volumes on Christian community. Bonhoeffer said,
“The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and then try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter.”
Don’t expect perfection. Adjust your expectations and embrace the actual, real people that God has put in your life, the brothers and the sisters around you, the people you’re actually in a community with. Embrace them and love them and trust them and help them as you are helped by them in your life of faith, and commit yourself to gathering. It’s the discipline of community.
5. Fix Your Eyes on Jesus: The Discipline of Faith
There’s one more, number five. Hebrews also calls us—and maybe supremely calls us—to fix our eyes on Jesus. It’s what we might call this morning the discipline of faith. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the great high priest, the forerunner, the Savior, the one who has gone before, the one who is exalted and enthroned and seated at the right hand of God. Keep your eyes on him. Believe him. Trust him. Look to him.
Two passages—Hebrews 3:1: “Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and the high priest of our confession.” That’s the reading from the NIV. The ESV says “consider Jesus,” but it’s more vivid, I think, and more helpful for us, to say, “fix your eyes on Jesus,” because he is telling us to set our thoughts intently on Jesus Christ.
Then you have the same kind of language in Hebrews 12:1-3. These are probably the most familiar verses in this letter to most of us. These are the verses that most of us have heard before.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance [that was the first discipline] the race that is set before us.”
But how do we do that?
“Looking to Jesus [or fixing our eyes on Jesus], the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Then he says it again in verse three.
“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”
That’s what this letter is about. This letter is a rousing call to faith, to look to Jesus, to trust in Jesus, to fix our hearts and our minds and our thoughts on Jesus, and to remember that he’s better, he’s supreme, and he’s worthy. He is the one who gives us the final word of God. God has now spoken through his Son, so we have a better word. He is the great high priest who is at the right hand of God, so he is a better priest. He’s not like those priests of the Old Testament who had to make sacrifices every single day, not just for the sins of others, but for their own sins. Jesus is the priest who’s made one sacrifice, the sacrifice that is finished, that is once and for all and is complete. It is utterly sufficient.
He’s a better priest, he’s made the better sacrifice; he’s the one who inaugurates and mediates a new and better covenant with God, and he leads us into the better rest, where we find rest for our weary souls in him. Everything in the Old Testament pointed to him. He is the fulfillment of every promise, he is the substance behind every type, every shadow, and he is the ultimate hope for all of us who trust in him.
It’s an often-repeated illustration, but it’s right here in the text, I think clear and helpful for us. Think of a runner—when he’s running for the finish line, that runner is not looking at his feet, he’s not looking at the other runners, he’s not thinking about all of his obstacles; he’s looking to the tape! He’s looking to the finish line. He’s running for the prize. In the same way, you and I are called to run with our eyes fixed on Jesus. Don’t look at yourself, don’t look at others, don’t look at your problems. Don’t focus your attention there; fix your eyes on Jesus. When you are weary, consider him. He endured the cross for the joy set before him. He is the great example of endurance. Look to him.
When you are struggling with faith, consider Jesus. He is the founder and the perfecter of your faith. When life is difficult, consider Jesus, the one who endured hostility and overcame it. Jesus is our model. Jesus is our example. Jesus is our Savior. Jesus is our prize. So consider Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, as we conclude not only this message but this series, the message of Hebrews is clear: Jesus is better. He is better than the old covenant. He is better than all the doubts and distractions that can get us off course, and he is better than any substitute the world can offer. The exhortations of this letter are simple and yet profound: Hold fast. Pay attention. Draw near. Encourage one another. Fix your eyes on Jesus. If you do so, you will be able to finish the race with endurance. And we need this. We need it for our own souls, but supremely we need to do this because Jesus Christ is worthy. He is worthy.
Let’s pray.
Gracious and merciful God, we thank you this morning for your word. We thank you for this rich and wonderful letter, this sermon called Hebrews, and for all that it teaches us, all that it urges us to do in response to the complete and finished work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray that you would give us hearts today to respond to the call of this letter; hearts of faith, hearts full of hope, hearts full of love for you and for your people.
Lord, may we commit ourselves to these disciplines, these practices, and may we keep uppermost in our hearts and in our affections Jesus Christ, who is worthy of our love, our devotion, our worship, and our praise.
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, we ask you, Lord, to use the table as a means of grace for us, to nourish and strengthen our faith, to set our eyes once again on the hope of Christ’s future return, and to strengthen us with present fellowship with Christ through the Spirit. We ask you, Lord, to draw near to us as we draw near to you and to work in our hearts what is pleasing in your sight. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
