Let Us Hold Fast | Hebrews 10:19-39
Brian Hedges | October 6, 2024
Let me invite you to turn in Scripture to Hebrews 10.
I want to start this morning with an illustration from The Pilgrim’s Progress. You might consider this an illustration that’s doing double work as both an entry point into the message today and also an advertisement for the class that’s going to begin this evening on The Pilgrim’s Progress.
There’s a scene in this book when Christian and his friend Hopeful are talking about a couple of characters that they have encountered named Temporary and Turnback. They are discussing why Temporary and Turnback and others like them turn away from the faith. What they essentially do is outline the path by which apostasy takes place. This is kind of a paraphrase of what they say, but it really outlines the steps. I want to read through these with you and then make a couple of comments.
(1) They say that they begin to ignore thoughts of God, death, and judgment. That begins this path of apostasy; they’re just not thinking about God or death or judgment.
(2) Then, they gradually stop their private spiritual practices, like prayer and resisting temptation and mourning over sin.
(3) Then they begin to avoid the company of passionate and faithful Christians.
(4) They grow indifferent to public worship—like attending church and reading the Bible.
(5) They start criticizing, then, the faults of other Christians. They do this to justify abandoning their faith.
(6) Then they begin to associate with worldly, careless, and immoral people.
(7) They engage in sinful conversations in secret, using others’ behavior as an excuse for sin.
(8) Then they start committing small sins openly.
(9) Eventually they become hardened and reveal their true selves, leading to destruction, unless God’s grace intervenes.
That’s a pretty frightful description of the pathway that a person can take, a person who at one time seems to be a Christian, someone who’s walking with God, but gradually begins to fall away, so that eventually there’s no faith left.
It’s interesting that some of these steps that are outlined there have to do with leaving the community of believers and then beginning to criticize the community of believers. I think that connects to something that we are seeing happen in our culture now. I’ve mentioned many times this book The Great De-Churching, that shows how 40 million people who once were in the church in the United States of America are now no longer attending church, many of whom have seemingly left the faith. So this is something that we need to be on guard against ourselves. I want us to understand it. But it’s also something that Hebrews addresses.
We’ve been studying this letter together for a number of weeks now, and we are in Hebrews 10, and we’re coming now to a passage that warns us against going down this path. A part of the warning is a warning to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together and then a warning of the judgment that will come if we fully and finally turn away from Christ.
This is a serious passage today, but it is a passage that has encouragement for us as well. Before I read the passage, I want to remind you of what we saw last week in the basic structure of this passage. We saw this as we looked at Hebrews 10:19-25 last week, that it really begins with these two gospel privileges. We now have confidence to enter into the sanctuary, the holy place, the very present of God; and we have a great high priest over the house of God.
Because of these two great gospel privileges, these privileges of the new covenant that Hebrews has been expounding for us, we then have three exhortations. Those exhortations are:
Let us draw near—that was the message last week.
Then, let us hold fast the confession of our hope, without wavering. That’s in Hebrews 10:23. That’s the second exhortation, and really the one we want to focus on this morning.
Then, let us consider one another, to stir up one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. That’s the third exhortation, and that’ll be the focus of the message next week.
But now I want you to see how the paragraphs that follow fit into this, because following these two gospel privileges and these three exhortations, there are then given three motivations. That’s the rest of the chapter, three motivations. Those motivations are:
a warning (verses 26-31)
an encouragement (verses 32-34)
a final challenge (verses 35-39) that kind of recalls the exhortations to faith and hope and love that are in those middle verses, verses 22-25
Now, what I want you to grasp here at the outset is that these three motivations are meant to support all of the exhortations—the exhortation to draw near, the exhortation to hold fast, and the exhortation that we’ll focus on next Sunday, the exhortation to consider one another and stir up one another to love and good deeds. We’re going to focus on that middle exhortation today, let us hold fast, but I want to begin by reading the passage to you as a whole, and as I read it I’ll point out these major sections that I’ve just outlined for you.
We begin with Hebrews 10:19, where you have these two gospel privileges.
“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…”
Here are the exhortations. Number one,
“...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.”
Now you have three motivations. First of all, a warning. Verse 26:
“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Then follows an encouragement in verse 32.
“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 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.”
Now there’s a final challenge in verse 35.
“Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,
‘Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay;
but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.’
“But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”
This is God’s word.
So, what I want to do this morning is work through the exhortation, the second exhortation, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope,” and then the rest of the chapter, the warning, the encouragement, and the challenge. I think what we will see is that once we understand this basic exhortation, the exhortation to hold fast to our hope, we’ll see that the warning, encouragement, and challenges serve as motivations that really inspire our hope, that encourage our hope, and that warn us about the danger of losing our hope.
1. The Exhortation
First of all, the exhortation, in Hebrews 10:23. It says, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”
This is language that we’ve already come across in Hebrews, the language “let us hold fast.” That phrase “hold fast” means to stick firmly to something or to hold onto something. We’ve already seen it in Hebrews 3:6, which tells us to “hold fast our confidence and our boasting in hope,” and in Hebrews 3:14, which says we are to “hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
Then there is a distinct but related word that’s used in a couple of other passages, also translated “hold fast.” Hebrews 4:14 talks about holding fast our confession, and Hebrews 6:18 shows how “we who have fled for refuge” might have a strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
This is obviously a theme that runs through the letter to the Hebrews. It’s one of the main exhortations and one of the main purposes of this letter. Hebrews was written to encourage us to hold fast to our hope, to hold fast to our confession, to hold fast to our confidence, to hold fast to our assurance, to not let it go.
The way it’s worded here, it is, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope.” That word carries the idea of an open and public acknowledgement of something. In fact, it really carries the idea not just of an open acknowledgement, but even of witness. It’s, “Let us hold fast to our public confession of a witness to our hope.”
Then it tells us to do so “without wavering.” It’s encouraging a kind of steadfast, steady, unwavering perseverance in hope.
And then a motivation is given right here: “For he who promised is faithful.”
Now again, if you just remember some of the things that were already said in Hebrews, this begins to connect with the rest of the letter. We have already seen a focus on hope in Hebrews 6, where the author says, “We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end.” That’s Hebrews 6:11. Then there’s this wonderful picture in Hebrews 6:19 where he says that we have this as a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.”
Well, here in this passage we’re seeing that we have this great privilege because the curtain’s been torn, the way has been opened, and we can draw near. We can come into the very presence of God and therefore hold fast our hope, this hope which serves as an anchor that steadies us, that helps us, that stabilizes us in our lives.
Maybe the best way to pull this together is just to quote words that many of you have sung dozens if not hundreds of times:
“My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame [that is, the sweetest frame of mind, not trusting in our emotions],
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”
Then do you remember this stanza?
“When darkness veils his lovely face,
I rest on his unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.”
That hymn and Hebrews are telling us that hope is the Christian virtue or grace which helps us to endure through hardship. When God’s face seems to be veiled from us or when we are in the storms of life, we have an anchor that keeps us steady. “In every high and stormy gale, / My anchor holds within the veil.”
In other words, Hebrews is written with a very practical end in view. Hebrews is written to give us and encourage within us the kind of hope that will keep us steady through trials, through temptation, and even through persecution that would tempt us to pull away from the Lord. That’s what this letter is intended to do.
Listen, some of you are there right now. Maybe it’s a temptation to somehow draw back from the Lord, maybe because of sin or something else. More likely it’s a temptation to grow discouraged in the face of difficulties, because you find yourself in a high and stormy gale, you find yourself in a very stressful season of life where the winds and the storms are raging, and you need something that will keep you steady, that will keep you faithful, that will help you endure.
When you get that diagnosis that yes, this is cancer and it’s terminal, or you get served divorce papers, or you find out that one of your adult children has made a choice that has grieved your heart so deeply that you just don’t quite know what to do with yourself, or you find out that you’ve lost your job, or whatever the trial may be—I mean, we all face these things in life—what keeps you steady during those kinds of seasons of life? Hebrews answers. What keeps you steady is hope. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” So hope is this grace or this virtue that looks to the God who makes and keeps his promises.
Again, Hebrews has already emphasized the promises of God. In fact, in Hebrews 8 we talked about the new covenant, and it is a better covenant that is enacted on better promises, right? Then Hebrews 9:15 describes in a phrase everything that God has promised for us. It speaks of those who are called who can receive the promised eternal inheritance. We’re waiting for something. We haven’t received the fullness of what God has promised yet; hope lays hold of those promises, lays hold of the God who’s made the promise, trusts that God will be faithful, and such hope will keep us steady through these trials.
That’s the exhortation. That’s the main point that I want us to grasp this morning and the main point of this second exhortation.
2. A Warning
Everything else that’s said in the rest of Hebrews 10 is meant to motivate us, to give us reasons to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering. So the next thing I want us to see is this warning in Hebrews 10:26-31.
The warning is one of several warnings in Hebrews. We’ve already seen warnings in Hebrews 2, 3-4, and again in Hebrews 6. It seems that when you read this letter the warnings seem to escalate in their seriousness as you go. So these words end up being some of the most severe and in some ways frightening words in all of the New Testament. This is one of those passages that’s given many Christians a lot of trouble. How in the world are we to interpret this?
I want to read it, Hebrews 10:26-31, and just notice here the underlined words that show that this is all about judgment. This is a warning about judgment.
“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.”
So, this is an argument from the lesser to the greater. He’s looking to the punishments in the old covenant for those who disobeyed or transgressed the law, and now he’s saying, how much worse is the punishment for those who reject the gospel. Verse 29:
“How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said [quoting Deuteronomy 32], ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
That’s the phrase from which Jonathan Edwards got the title for that famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
What are we to make of this passage? I think it will help if we just ask three questions about it and try to answer those questions.
(1) First question: What does “go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth” mean? That’s the first thing we have to answer. What does that mean? Does that mean that if you commit a sin after you become a Christian you cannot be forgiven? Does that mean that if you commit a habitual sin after you become a Christian you cannot be forgiven? Does it mean that if you not just fall into sin because of temptation, in spite of your best resolves, but if you willfully choose to commit a sin—you tell a cold, barefaced lie, you know you’re telling a lie, and you choose to tell the lie—does that mean you cannot be forgiven? Is that what this passage is talking about?
You can see why this would trouble many Christians, because probably all of us, if we’re honest, would say, “Of course I’ve sinned since I became a Christian. I’ve sinned repeatedly since I became a Christian. At times I’ve sinned habitually, for a period of time at least, after I became a Christian. And there have been times when I knew I was sinning, I chose to sin; it wasn’t just that I succumbed to temptation in a moment of weakness, I knew what I was doing and I chose to do it anyway. Can I be forgiven?”
The best answer that I have read to this comes from John Calvin in his commentary on Hebrews. I want to read it to you. I think this is very helpful. He says,
“The apostle describes as sinners not those who fall in any kind of way but those who forsake the church and separate themselves from Christ. There is a great difference between individual lapses and a universal [or a total] desertion of this kind. It is clear from the context that the apostle is referring here only to apostates.”
That’s the basic answer. This is referring to the sin of apostasy.
“He declares that for such there is no longer any offering for sin, because they have sinned willfully after receiving knowledge of the truth. At the same time, Christ daily offers himself for sinners who have fallen in any other way so that they need look for no other offering to atone for their sins. Those who hold to Christ are called by God daily to reconciliation, are daily refreshed by the blood of Christ, and find daily atonement for their sins by his eternal sacrifice. If no salvation is to be found apart from him, we should not be surprised that those who let go of him of their own accord are deprived of every hope of pardon. The sacrifice of Christ is efficacious [or effectual] for believers right to the time of death, even if they repeatedly sin. The apostle is therefore directing his attention only on those who desert Christ in their unbelief and so deprive themselves of the benefit of his death.”
I find that very helpful. I think Calvin is right on the mark there, that this is a warning against the sin of apostasy.
So, just to apply this very clearly to those of you who are struggling with sin and yet you are clinging to Christ, this passage is not saying that you can’t be forgiven. In fact, there is daily forgiveness and pardon and reconciliation for you as you confess your sins and you bring those to the cross. Jesus Christ will forgive any sin that we confess and fight against and struggle to mortify, even if it is a sin that we struggle with for a lengthy period of time.
To those who willfully have chosen to sin in some way—let’s say you did deliberately tell a lie, or you willfully chose to indulge lust, or you chose to say something vindictive and hurtful to another person. You knew you were doing it, you knew it was wrong, and you chose to do it anyway. You can still be forgiven if you repent of that sin and you confess that sin. The blood of Christ covers that sin.
By talking here about a deliberate or a willful sin, it doesn’t mean any sin that you willfully choose to commit, it means this ongoing pattern of deliberate sin in rejecting Christ and rejecting the gospel.
However—let me also say this—this is a warning to anyone who would make peace with their sin and then begin to drift away from Christ. A Christian should never make peace with sin. If we have done that in our lives, that should call our assurance into question and it should urge us to repentance, because there is a kind of sin that leads to apostasy, and that’s what this passage is warning us against.
(2) Second question: What does he mean when he says “there remains no more sacrifice for sins”? What does that mean, in Hebrews 10:26? “There remains no more sacrifice for sins.”
I think what he means is this, that because the sacrifices of the old covenant, the levitical sacrifices, could never put away sin, and because these people have rejected the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, have rejected the gospel, there’s no possibility of atonement for them. They can’t be justified by the old covenant sacrifices, and they’ve rejected the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Therefore there’s no forgiveness, because there’s no sacrifice for them that will atone for their sins.
To quote Thomas Shriner, “Forgiveness only belongs to those who continue to trust in Jesus for forgiveness.” If you reject the forgiveness that is in Jesus, there’s no forgiveness. You’re not forgiven.
This does remind us that not everybody is forgiven. Now, a lot of people want to say and want to believe that God just forgives everyone, regardless of faith or repentance or anything in them. But that is not what the Bible teaches.
That’s a hard pill for many people to swallow, and I don’t have time to deal with all of the cultural objections to that declaration this morning, but I think it’s pretty clear from Scripture that there are people who will not be forgiven. This passage talks about judgment, it talks about punishment, it talks about the fury of fire. It talks about this kind of retribution that will come on those who reject Christ and who reject the gospel.
(3) That, of course, raises a third question: How are God’s threats of judgment, punishment, and vengeance loving and just?
Well, I think we have to be clear that that is what this passage is teaching. You see that in Hebrews 10:26-31. We could say, as was said in a message a couple weeks ago, that a truly just and good God cannot actually be indifferent to wickedness and evil, to that which brings destruction and pain and suffering into the world that he loves. So part of the love of God is his opposition to anything which will destroy those whom he loves.
But then another thing I think we need to see here that I think explains the severity of the judgment in this passage is in Hebrews 10:29. There is this description of the apostasy that puts it in such severe terms that show why this is such a terrible sin. Look at this.
“How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?”
I don’t know of any more severe words in Scripture to describe what someone is doing when they have understood the gospel, they have professed faith in the gospel, and then they reject the gospel. They are walking all over Jesus, trampling the Son of God underfoot. They are profaning the blood of the covenant. That means they are treating the blood of the covenant as if it’s unclean. And they are outraging the Spirit of grace.
I think perhaps one of the best answers to the question, “How are God’s threats of judgment, punishment, and vengeance loving and just?” comes from C.S. Lewis. I would commend to you his book The Problem of Pain. There’s a wonderful chapter on hell in The Problem of Pain. And while I don’t agree with everything Lewis says there, I find his reasoning helpful in many respects. Here’s one thing he says that I’ve always found helpful. This is his answer to those who object to hell. He says,
“In the long run, the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and at all cost to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.”
I think that’s what this passage is teaching. This passage is teaching that those who refuse the forgiveness that is freely and graciously and lovingly offered by God through Jesus and through the cross—those who refuse the forgiveness won’t be forgiven, because they’ve turned their back on the offer of salvation that God has made.
So here’s the warning: hold fast to your hope, because to lose your hope is to turn your back on Jesus, to turn your back on the gospel, and there is only judgment for those who forsake Christ.
3. An Encouragement
Then you have an encouragement in Hebrews 10:32-33. Look at verse 32. It says,
“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.”
This is an encouragement for the very readers that the author is addressing here to recall their former endurance. It reminds them that after they became Christians—that’s what “after you were enlightened means”—they had this hard struggle with sufferings. They had to endure. They were publicly ridiculed, and they were also partners with people who were suffering for their faith. He’s just reminding them, “You already have endured suffering for the sake of Christ. Remember what you’ve endured, and remember that endurance.”
Then he’s also encouraging them in verse 34 to remember their future hope. Verse 34 says, “For you had compassion on those in prison and,” get this, “you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property…” How do they do that? How do you joyfully accept the plundering of your property? The rest of that verse gives us the key to endurance. “...since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”
You see, they were able to let earthly comforts and even possessions go and do so joyfully because they knew they had something better, right?
You remember the words of that great missionary, martyred when he was just twenty-eight years old, Jim Elliot? “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” This is right at the heart of faith in Christ. It is this belief that if we deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow him, we actually don’t lose anything in the long run. We gain everything! Because you can’t keep yourself, you can’t keep your possessions, you can’t keep your earthly life as it is. You can’t keep any of this. You’re going to lose it anyway. But if you let this go in order to follow Christ, you gain everything. So hope here, faith here is motivated by this promise of future reward.
Hebrews 11:6 says, as we’ll see in a few weeks, “Without faith it is impossible to please God; for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.” You can’t please God without this kind of faith, and it is faith which looks to God to give us the reward, to give us the inheritance, to be faithful to what he has promised.
This is the key to endurance in the Christian life. This is how Paul could be in prison in Philippians 1 and could rejoice in his sufferings and say, “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” I’m gaining Christ.
This is how Jesus could tell Peter and the other disciples that everyone who has “left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms my sake will receive many times as much and will inherit eternal life.”
This is how the great missionaries in church history, like David Livingstone, could look at all the sacrifices that they had made and say something like this:
“People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward and healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice; say rather it is privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us and for us. I never made a sacrifice!”
Brothers and sisters, when it’s all said and done, when we are resurrected from the grave and we have received the fullness of our inheritance and we are clothed in glory and we are in the eternal joy of the Father, we will look back on everything we suffered in following Jesus Christ and we’ll say it was nothing. “It was nothing. I had everything to gain; I lost nothing. There was no sacrifice. I have just received grace and hope and promise and reward in glory.”
This is how hope works. This is part of the motivation to hold fast the confession of your hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful, and you will lose nothing.
4. A Challenge
That leads us to the last and final thing, a challenge, in verses 35-39. It says,
“Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,
‘Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay—’”
He has in mind here the second coming of Christ, the day is drawing near of the second coming of Christ. He’s quoting here from the prophet Habakkuk. Verse 38:
“‘...but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.’
“But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”
I want you to see the challenge here and how this challenge connects to what went before. We can see the challenge stated negatively, where it says, “Do not throw away your confidence,” and, “we are not of those who shrink back.” Notice there the very visual language. Don’t throw away your confidence. Don’t toss it aside. Don’t shrink back.
Now compare that with what has already been stated positively in terms of exhortations. Let us hold fast. Don’t throw away; hold fast. And let us draw near—don’t shrink back; draw near. Do you see it?
In other words, all this passage is telling us to do is continue in faith and continue in hope. The challenge is a call to enduring hope and persevering faith. It is the call to keep our eyes on Jesus and his promises. It’s the call to remember that Jesus is better. That’s what Hebrews is all about.
Now, back to The Pilgrim’s Progress. If you’ve never read the book, I hope that you will participate in this study. If you’ve read the book, you will recall that there are many characters that you meet along the way who don’t make it from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. They don’t make it all the way. You do have Temporary and Turnback, and you’ve got Talkative and you’ve got Ignorace. You have these people who have the form of words—they have religious talk, but they don’t actually make it all the way. For some reason or another, they get off the path and they don’t make it to the Celestial City.
But the book is very instructive in showing us not only those who don’t go all the way but showing us those who do. You remember some of the characters who do make it all the way, who are faithful to the point of death or who make it all the way to the Celestial City? You have Faithful, who is martyred for Christ. He’s faithful. You have Hopeful, who travels the rest of the way to the Celestial City with Christian.
Get this; don’t miss this. Christian endures all the way to the end, Faithful is faithful to death, and Hopeful journeys all the way to the Celestial City. Bunyan is telling us what Hebrews is telling us, that those who are true Christians, those who believe, and those who hope—those who have these basic graces that characterize every genuine Christian, the basic graces of faith and hope—they do endure. They do endure all the way to the end, and they do receive the promise. This passage is a call to us to believe and to hope and to remember that Jesus is better.
Let me end in this way. Years ago I heard this story told by John Piper. It was originally told by Richard Wurmbrand, author of Tortured for Christ. It’s a story about a family in the Sudan. The Muslims there were very militant in their efforts to impose Islam on Christians. This is a true story about a family that was being persecuted, persecuted to the point where death was imminent. They told their small child, “We’re going to be deported for our faith, and we will likely die of starvation if we maintain our faith. But do not mind; we will be crowned martyrs in heaven.”
This is what the child did. The child took his toys and gave them to some other children and said, “You can have these toys. I don’t need them anymore. In heaven I will have better toys.”
What faith!
“Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.”
If you have Jesus, then you have the kingdom, you have the promises, you have an eternal inheritance, you have a better hope. You have a hope that’s like an anchor, and it will keep you steady no matter what you face in life as you’re faithful to Jesus. Let’s pray together.
Gracious God, would you work now in our hearts to not only create this kind of faith and hope in anyone who does not have it this morning, but to sustain this faith and hope in all of us who have committed ourselves to follow Jesus? This is the work of your Spirit, it is the work of your grace. It is the fulfillment of your new covenant promises in Christ, to write your law in our hearts, to give us a new heart, to put your Spirit within us so that we will not depart from you. So we ask you, Lord, to keep us. We ask you to hold us fast even as you give us the exhortation to hold fast to our confession, our confidence, and our hope.
We pray this morning that you would work in us what is pleasing in your sight, and that you would do so for the sake of Jesus Christ, who has purchased salvation for us, and by the power of the Spirit dwelling within us. We pray that even as we come to the Lord’s table this morning that the table would be for us a means of grace that strengthens and renews our faith and our hope. So Father, draw near to us now by your Spirit, and be glorified in our worship and in our lives. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.