174 - Implications of a Once-for-All Sacrifice [B]

Hebrews Lesson 174  September,2009

^NKJ Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.

Open your Bibles to Hebrews 10. We're going to look at the last verse, the last couple of verses just to pull a couple things together for us as we wrap up this section in Hebrews. I'm going to skip over to Hebrews 10:39. 

Now we're coming to one of those great transition sections in Hebrews. Hebrews has five sections in Hebrews; five basic teachings, each followed by an exhortation. There's an instructional section followed by a challenge to application or an exhortation section. Usually within those there's a warning for what may occur because of failure; very serious warnings in Hebrews of the dangers of just basically wimping out in the Christian life which is the problem that these are formerly Jewish priests were facing because under persecution. Under adversity they were just wanting to bail out of their Christianity go back in and just be assimilated into Jewish society (Jewish culture, first century Judaism) without being the object of opposition. 

So this has been a focal point in this section we've been in from chapter 7 through the end of chapter 10. The focal point is, don't give up. Then the conclusion states:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:39 But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.

Now it's really important to understand some of the terminology in this verse because this is one of those hinge verses that uses one specific vocabulary word here that sets up the entire next chapter. The next chapter moves us into the 5^th section, which goes from 11:1 down to the end of the book (13:25). The 11^th chapter is a teaching section; 12 is an exhortation section related to chapter 11 (the teaching there); then chapter 13 is the overall summary challenge for the whole epistle itself. 

Now it's important to look at this terminology because the way it's translated in English, "those who draw back to perdition" seems kind of odd. The word perdition brings into people's thinking the idea of the loss of salvation perhaps or not being saved or eternal condemnation. That seems to be clarified in the context because you have the word save, the saving of the soul in the second half of the verse. But if you look at the Greek, it doesn't use the word sozo for saving there. It really has a different sense. 

^NKJ Hebrews 10:39 But we are not of those who draw back to perdition,

Perdition is this Greek word hupostole, which means to contract, to pull back. It's used in a lot of, several pieces of literature to indicate the state of being timid. It's not being willing to step out with courage and to go forward; it has to be timid, hesitant. It is used in one context referring to a body of troops.  Instead of being committed to the battle, they held them back because they were afraid to risk the battle. Therefore the battle was lost because there was a failure to exercise courage. So there's almost an idea in which this expresses the idea of cowardice because it's a failure to push forward, a failure to risk.  It's used in Josephus of persons who have no reservations about indulging themselves in baseness, as a dictionary puts it. In other words, it's used of those who were giving themselves totally over to their sin nature. 

So the writer of Hebrews says, "We're not those who are timid or who lack courage and as a result they are going toward perdition."

Now the word that is used here for perdition is not a word that focuses on a loss of salvation; it could be the loss of any number of things: the loss of life, the loss of whatever has been gained. It can refer to physical discipline, divine discipline that comes in time. The word is used about a 111 times in Scripture; and it has a variety of meanings, not just related to the eternal condemnation but also to temporal judgment. 

So there's a contrast that's set up here between one group of Christian believers who are not pushing forward in the Christian life. They are not willing to put it all on the line. They do not truly trust in what the Scripture says, so they just wimp out. There is no endurance. There is no perseverance, and they fail to really seize the initiative and seize the objective.

On the other hand, there are those who believe to the end of the saving of the soul. So the word there translated believe looks like a relative; but it's not a relative clause in the Greek. That's just the way it's translated, usually "those who believe". It comes across as a relative; but in the original it is simply a genitive, those of faith. We're not of the spiritually regressive; we're of the faith. That's the contrast.

The word there for faith is pistis, which is the basic noun for faith, meaning: faith, trust, confidence. I think that the idea here is more on the confidence because of where we're going to go into the next chapter. That of the advancing believers mentioned, there is a confidence. There is an aggressiveness in their spiritual life that is lacking in the others who just want a bailout, give up and wimp out spiritually. So pistis has that of idea faith, trust and confidence – dependence. Faith is easily defined as relying upon something or agreeing that something is true and living in light of that fact. 

It's amazing how many people hit tests in life. James talks about the fact that when you encounter various tests because we know that the testing of faith. It tests the doctrine that is resident in our soul.

I was talking to a pastor today and two examples— I'm going to change them up a little bit so nobody can trace them to anybody). The names are changed to protect the innocent—two different situations that he's run across in his ministry. Here you have believers who've been sitting and studying the Bible and have been learning good solid biblical teaching for years. Then all the sudden they hit a real speed bump in their spiritual life. In both cases it happens to be with their children. The adults are parents who are in there of middle age years, and their children are adult children in their 20's. In one situation there is a child (I'm not going to say whether it's male or female) that has been involved in missionary dating which is always the path to perdition in the way that it's used here. There are so many people who do that. And Christians will do that sometimes because there doesn't seem like there's any body else out there.  What that does is it opens the door of compromise at the very beginning with the world system. What this exposes after time is that this person who is a solid believer starts dating somebody who is an unbeliever who is involved in a cult (one of the major a non-Christian cults) that claims to be Christian and falls in love. Now you've got a problem because Mom and Dad start getting brought in eventually because their wonderful offspring wants to marry someone who is an unbeliever but thinks they're a believer. As you start to teach them about what's involved with this cult and what they actually believe, there is this resistance to that. They really don't want to hear how evil that doctrine really is in that cult group because "my son or daughter" is going to marry somebody in that group and so if I take the kind of strong stand that I really should take - but I've lost my objectivity because now it involves a child. Then all of a sudden they start waffling.

And you get into another situation that came up recently. This e-mail was passed around related to the Muslim prayer day tomorrow. Are you all familiar with the fact that there's this huge Muslim prayer day tomorrow on the steps of the capital in Washington DC? They're going to have this gathering of Muslims on the steps of the capital and having this big prayer. So what are praying for? Are they going to be praying that the Constitution is followed, do you think? Or for Shria law? 

As to what one person commented, "So we're going to have these Satanists on the steps of the capital praying up for the nation." I said, "Well, what's different from the satanically inspired cosmic system thinking people inside the capital who are praying for, you know, the collapse of the nation?"

You have cosmic one versus cosmic two. You just have different forms of worldly thinking engaged. One happens to be a violent aggressive religion; the other happens to be a passive liberal religion. You know they're both part of Satan's cosmic system. We need to be in prayer for that.

But as this e-mail went out, there was somebody else whose adult child saw this and said, "How intolerant. We can't be passive. This is so terrible to say that all of these people are - and condemn them in this in this manner."

And it wasn't a condemnatory type of thing. But we have to realize that people who don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only one way to heaven – if they die tomorrow, they are going straight to torments and then to the Lake of Fire for eternal punishment. And that is very real.

But when you have children who have absorbed all of the thought in the world system around them so that that is not a reality for them; then when they start seeing you as a parent saying, "This is absolutely wrong and we cannot support that at all," you are viewed as being one intolerant radical religious nut case. 

This is happening again and again and again. It's because there's not this faith in this sense of conviction and this faith in the sense of certainty there because people believe Jesus is the only way; but they're not willing to really push that to what it actually means or to work it out consistently in terms of their thinking. Jesus is either the only way or He's not. 

You can't say, "Well, He's the only way for me," which is what is kind of sitting around in the back of their mind is that, "Well that's what I believe but I'm not really going to push this too far." If they do, then all of a sudden they're exposed as being so radically different in their thinking from all of their peers.  That applies to people in their 60's, as well as in their 20's or in their teens. 

So faith has an element as you grow and mature as a believer; it has an element of confidence, an element of certainty that leads you to exploit that in terms of life situations and in terms of how you aggressively. You can be aggressive in a nice way and you can be aggressive in an obnoxious way. But as a believer, we need to be aggressive in how we are applying our Christianity and not wimp out in fear and worry and the fact the cosmic system around us puts that peer pressure on us to constantly think you're just like one of those backwoods snake handlers up there in Tennessee somewhere, or one of those back woods folk who are always after the revenuers or something. You're just backward. You're not odd or you're not tolerant. 

So we suddenly hear the world say this over and over again and we start developing an inferiority complex. The next thing you know you're like the people that the writer of Hebrews is addressing; and you're wanting to just sort of regress a little bit and not be out there with your Christianity. 

So Hebrews 10:39 is drawing this contrast between those who just want to regress and retreat in their Christianity and those who are going to aggressively exploit it in life. Remember, when I should say that word again "aggressively exploit it", I mean you are actively engaged in changing your thinking by the Word of God; not that you're out there with some sort of obnoxious in-your-face evangelism that is more offensive in its method than it is in its in its content.

So in 10:39, there's a contrast between those who draw back to perdition and those who believe to the saving of the soul. I should have highlighted the word for savings here or changed it on the slide. But the word for saving is perpoiesis – peri is a preposition and poieo is the idea to do. It means encircle around. It came to be used to mean in one sense keeping or saving or preserving. The second meaning is to gain or attain something, to acquire something; but the third meeting is really interesting: the idea of possession, the idea of possession, owning property, which is very close to the idea of inheritance. 

Now remember, inheritance is a key concept that underlies this whole message in Hebrews that we have an inheritance in the future and that inheritance includes ruling and reigning with the Lord Jesus Christ. If we fail and fade out in the tough times in the Christian life, then we jeopardize our future rewards and our future inheritance in the kingdom and in heaven. We don't jeopardize our justification or our position in the family of God; but we jeopardize our future position, our future rewards which is identified as possession. So I think that this idea of the saving of the soul here in this phraseology, if it's used with sozo, it is an idiom for saving the life. The soul is put for the life.

We did that in English for many years. We got it from the Bible. You know, how many souls were lost when the Titanic went down? That's how they used to report that thing. That so many souls were lost. They were using the word soul as a synonym for life. They got that from the Bible. So we have this contrast set up in Hebrews 10:39 between two categories of believers. On the one hand those who are spiritually regressive (headed to temporal discipline) and those who are of faith. 

"But we are of faith to the possession of the life." 

That is that full life, the abundant life that Jesus was talking about when He said in John 10:

^NKJ John 10:10 "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Two categories: life in terms of eternal life and abundant life in terms of the rich full blessings that we have in the spiritual life if we're growing and maturing in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

So which category do you fit in? That's the issue. Now this ends this section. The next section starts off. Now let me set this up again. It ends by saying we are of faith for the possession of life. Forget there's a chapter difference. Forget there are verse differences. Just watch. 

^NKJ Hebrews 10:39 But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

What is that faith in Hebrews 11:1 talking about? It's talking about what characterizes this whole group of people who are pressing on, exploiting their position in Christ and the doctrine that they have and their walk by the Holy Spirit. So it's not just a matter of faith as an act of trusting; but it incorporates a much fuller idea that includes not only the active of trusting but what is trusted in the body of doctrine and belief that we have been given to the Scripture and it is that the confidence in the Word of God and doctrine that gives us a personal sense of our eternal destiny. 

What we're going to see when we get into chapter 11 and we go through this whole history of various heroes of faith in the Old Testament that are being brought forward as an example for us of those who did not let the speed bumps of life catastrophically wipe out their spiritual life. They had failures. They regressed at times. They had major failures at other times, but they trusted and they utilized doctrine to keep them from being completely overwhelmed by the cosmic system in their generation. 

What kept them going was a personal sense of eternal destiny. So the problem solving devises are foundational to understanding what is the key to their success in Hebrews 11. It's not on the surface, but it's what gives them that focus. The one that really comes to the foreground is going to be that personal sense of eternal destiny. For example Abraham sees that city that's built without hands. He never owned the land God promised him. But because he has his focus on city built without hands which is somewhere in the future in the undefined eternity somewhere, he's able to live his present life in light of eternity. That is the motivational message that is in the book of Hebrews.

So as we come to this point where we change, shift gears into our next section, I want to take a take the time to go back and summarize. In the next 35 minutes we're going to cover Hebrews 7 through 13, half the book in 35 minutes. That's important because now we've done all this nitty-gritty little exegesis, and we spent a year going through all of the Tabernacle, the sacrifices and everything - that takes an incredible amount of time to work out all of those details. I remember when we were in that subject every day I would read those passages and see things I didn't see the day before. You feel sometimes like you're walking through quicksand. That's because there's just so much so much information there to try to really deal with, synthesize and then put it all together. It's not always easy to do that, but you have to do all that detail work in order to make sure that you're coming out with the final conclusions and assumptions, rather final conclusions and applications based on the text. 

So just to give you a little review for the structure of Hebrews, the first section was in 1:1 to 2:4. There's a doctrinal exposition in 1:1 through 14. That was followed by a practical exhortation and warning in 2:1-4. 

Now if you want to, you can just go back to Hebrews 1 in your Bible. We'll just kind of walk our way through some of this. I'm not going to spend much time in the first three sections in terms of this review. I really want to focus more on the fourth section and then giving us an overview of the fifth section.

Now in 1:1-4 we had the prelude to the book.

^NKJ Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,

² has in these last days spoken to us

Indicating finality of that revelation

by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things,

So from the very beginning inheritance (that idea of possession) is up front in the epistle. Christ was appointed the heir of all things; in Him we become heirs of God and by maturity joint heirs of Christ. 

^NKJ Hebrews 1:3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

We have "spoke" in verse 1. God "spoke", verse 2. He has spoken. Now we have the Word. Revelation is inherent to this. That's the focal point is first three sections—really that God has spoken, what are you doing with it? 

If God has really spoken, how important is that to you? If God has really indeed spoken and given you personally a revelation, what kind of difference is that making in your life? Don't you think that it's important, more important than just showing up in class on occasion or showing up at church on Sunday on occasion? If we really grasp what it means that God wrote this as a personal piece of information, that He said, "You have to know this. If you are going to have any measure of success in your life, you need to know and capture and assimilate the thinking that's in this book". Do you really believe that? And are the decisions that you make in terms of the priorities of your life part of that? That's the message in those first three sections if you just boil it down to one basic of doctrinal idea.

Then it talks about the revelation through His Son and the significance of His Son and the ascension and that He's ascended above and placed above the angels in chapter 1. 

Therefore if Jesus really is who He says He is, don't you think that ought to make a difference? Jesus is not just another historical figure like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great; He is the eternal God of the universe who created everything who has been totally incarnate as a human being in order to reveal through Himself as the living Word, the spoken Word of God. It's all about communication. 

So the challenge therefore is that we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard.  In other words we must seriously pay attention to what the message is lest we drift away. 

What's happening by the time you get to the end of the 4^th section? They are drifting away. They're falling back. They're fading out.

^NKJ Hebrews 2:2 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward,

That's Old Testament revelation.

^NKJ Hebrews 2:3 how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him,

If we take it for granted that we have the Bible…  Great! Go home; toss it on the shelf.  "I'll grab it Sunday morning when I go to church."

How many times do you read through the Bible in a year? How many times have you read through the New Testament? How many times have you read through the Gospels? How many times have you read through Psalms? If this is the Word of God, don't you think you really ought to be paying more attention to it than just hauling it to Bible class three times a week, or hauling it out when you have a tape? This is the most vital message you will ever get in your life.

So them we go to the second section, 2:5-4:13. There's the doctrinal exposition in 2:5 through 3-6. The focal point of this is really in those verses 2:9,10.

^NKJ Hebrews 2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste

That is "fully partake of." 

 death for everyone.

^NKJ Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting for Him,

That is God the Father.

for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

Why?

^NKJ Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

He is the one who now comes along side as our High Priest. He is really the first Comforter and the Holy Spirit is the second Comforter.

Jesus said, "When I leave I will send another Comforter of the same kind."

So there is the challenge, the teaching related to Jesus as to who is and what He accomplished on the cross. Then the challenge is to be faithful as He was.  Faithful is mentioned in verse 17 and then in 3:2 and again in 3:5. Moses indeed was faithful. 

But there's a warning and this is the warning that comes in 3:7-4:13. The illustration comes from those Jews in the wilderness who weren't faithful. Because they weren't faithful, they jeopardized what God had promised them, and they never entered the Land. They lost such a tremendous load of blessing and privilege because they failed to exploit what God had given them. They didn't trust Him. They griped and they complained and they looked at all these circumstances that happened to them as if somehow God had lost control. They weren't the circumstances they wanted to have in their life; but they acted like somehow these circumstances weren't under God's control either. But they were. 

By failing to exploit and utilize the doctrine that they had and to trust Him and have confidence in God (more confident than their own experience), then they lost that promise of rest. That takes us through 4:13.

Then we get to the third section from 4:14 down to 6:20. This is going to now develop that whole idea of the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ and it develops a significance of that priesthood and what He provides for us as a priest because now it gives us the opportunity to have direct access to the Father. 

We are challenged in 4:14 to hold fast to our confession. That is the body of doctrine that we believe because we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.

^NKJ Hebrews 4:14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

^NKJ Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

So the impeccability of Christ needs to be a reality to us because since He is sinless, He is able to strengthen us when we go through temptation. 

^NKJ Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

That leads into the 5^th chapter, the qualifications for the priesthood that in the Old Testament there was a qualification, which is based on genetics, on lineage. They had to descend from Levi and the high priest had to be a descendent of Aaron. There was no spiritual qualification at all. He just couldn't have certain diseases, certain other flaws or blemishes physically. But that was it. It wasn't spiritual. But the priesthood that Christ has is a spiritual priesthood, which then gets developed in chapter 7. 

So the warning has to do with taking all of this lightly. The warning comes in 6:4-8. The exhortation section is from up 5:11 to 6:20 and the warning is in the middle of that, those first 8 verses or so of chapter 6. 

The conclusion of this in relationship to our spiritual life has to do with the faithfulness of God. He made a promise to Abraham, verse 13. He's going to fulfill that. Promise is a key word there. It's used in 6:12; used in 6:13; used in 6:15; used again in 6:17. God is going to fulfill those promises to Israel and to us as Church Age believers.

Now all of that takes us to the 4^th section, which is 7:1 to 10:39. Now I want you to think in terms of the trajectory here. There is a place that this writer is going in your head. If you can't read, then we get lost. That's a problem that we've got today is that so many people don't know how to read so they can't trace those logical steps and flow of what a writer is saying. That's what I'm trying to show here is that there's a trajectory here. He has a target that he wants to hit and he's using all of these sections to drive us to that bull's eye. The bull's eye that he's headed toward in this section is stated in 10:18, the last verse. It doesn't always work out that way but in this case is does. In 10:18 He makes a statement:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:18 Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.

That's a conclusion. All of this material that he goes through in terms of the priesthood of Christ verses the Levitical priesthood: that Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek which is a superior priesthood because it's not limited by the Mosaic Law. It is an eternal priesthood. It's not based on simply physical qualifications; it's based on spiritual qualifications because Jesus is a priest without sin. He is able to save those whom He saves to the uttermost for eternity because He is eternal.

So then he goes into all of the sacrificial system in detail that these priests would be familiar with that as you look at all of the ritual involved in the Mosaic system and the Levitical sacrifices and all of the things that were involved in the worship of the Tabernacle and later at the temple. All of that is temporary.  It didn't do anything for sin. There is sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice – dead goats, dead sheep, dead bullocks, all the way through the Old Testament.  And it doesn't do anything about sin. There is just simply a ritual cleansing that takes place but not only does it not do anything about not doing anything about sin itself but when it comes to willful there weren't even sacrifices for that.

So his conclusion that he drives to in chapter 10 is – this is an earth shattering conclusion for anybody coming out of any kind of works salvation or any kind of Judaism is that there is no longer a sacrifice for sin because what Christ did on the cross – it's done with. You don't have to worry about it anymore. It's the end of guilt. It's the end of trying to pay for your sin. It's the end of trying to somehow impress God with who you are and what you've done and good works and all of this slavery that people are put under by religion. It's done. They're no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. So there's this lengthy doctrinal exposition, which is at the core of this whole book in these chapters from 7:1 to 10:18 all driving to that one conclusion. 

Now we have just studied that so that's fresh on your mind because in the practical section the challenge that comes up in 10:19 to 39. There is the tough warning passage starting in verse 26 that if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.  As I've pointed out, what that means is the willful sin is taken care of too. There is no longer a sacrifice for sin. 

All of this is based on one critical, critical word that is used again and again in this section. In fact it's used five times: four times in chapter nine and one time in chapter 10. That is the Greek word hapox, which means once – once for all. Five times he mentions that:  9:7, 9:26, 9:27, 9:28 and 10:2. These are all passages that talk about Jesus Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. It's that one time sacrifice that covers everything. It ends the problem once and for all. 

This is such a problem for people. It's such a problem for Christians because we just have such trouble with grace. Grace: we are so much trouble with somebody giving us something. We want to do something in return. Well, that's nice. It's gratitude. But just for somebody to give you something out of the goodness of their heart, especially if somebody wanted to give you $1,000,000 and no strings attached: wait a minute, we're suspicious. We feel like we have to do something. What's going to happen? When is the other shoe going to drop? When is the IRS going to find out? All of these things start going through our minds and it's just a free gift. It is everything and it frees us so, not so we can say, "Now I can get off Scot free with whatever I do"; but so now I am free from restraints so I can live for God, move toward in my Christian life and not worry about when I fumble the ball, when I drop the ball, when I sin. I can just move forward because grace is taking care of everything. 

So because we're in this cosmic conflict of the angelic conflict (because we're in this spiritual warfare that envelopes us), there's always going to be opposition to anyone who is trying to go forward in his Christian life. 

As you know I meet with a group of pastors on Thursday mornings. We have five or six that meet here locally and then there are three or four that meet around the country. About three weeks ago I started teaching a first year Greek class to these guys. Some of these guys have had Greek before; but it's always good to go back and review first year Greek, first year Hebrew. I try to do something like this every decade because there are so many little rules and little things (minutia) that you forget that you memorized at one time in and it's dropped through the holes of the sieve and you have to go back and you pick it up. It strengthens you as you go forward so I enjoy doing that. It's great. It has a great benefit to me, and my own study. But it's great to watch these guys come along. 

But it's amazing to see how every one of these guys it seems is being hit with distractions left and right whether it has to do with side businesses or it has to do with health or whether it has to do with all of a sudden a lot of responsibilities in the church or their ministries that wants to just push them off and say, "Well you know I just can't do it. I'm too busy. I've go too many things going on. I'm just getting wiped out." 

Satan just tends to blind-side us like that. Anybody who gets serious about their spiritual life and their spiritual advance, one thing you can count on is you're going to start hitting the speed bumps. You're going to start being T-boned by the cosmic system every time you go through spiritual intersection. If you're not focused on going forward and what the real issues are then you let these things that come up on a daily basis sidetrack you mentally. The next thing you know, your mental focus and concentration is just all out of whack because you're more concerned about the day-to-day problems of the details of your life then you are about implementing the Word of God to solve the details that are going on in your life. 

That's what happens with these Jewish believers. They have had rejection from family members. They have had hostility from this system that they've been in all of their life. They are facing in some cases overt persecution. They have lost property. They have lost their homes. They have lost things. Perhaps if they have been career priests, now they don't know what it is that they are supposed to do. They have just been completely removed from that which gave them a comfort zone. Now they're in a totally new environment and after a while they just say, "Okay, can't take it anymore. I want to give up."

So this is where we come to by the end of chapter 10. The writer is saying, "Okay, are you going to be counted with the weenies who wimp out or are you going to be with those who are mentally tough, spiritually focused, who are going to endure and persevere to the end, who are going to achieve the objective and the mission that God has set for you and your spiritual life so that you're prepared for what comes later? Which side are you going to be on?"

Then he's going to give us these illustrations of those who are on the side of conviction, those who are on the side of certainty, those who have hung tough in the midst of opposition. So the first 2 verses in chapter 11 are going to bring us an orientation to the new section. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Now a lot of you have heard people as I have, have heard a lot of great sermons on how this defines faith. That's not a definition. That isn't telling you what faith is. A definition of faith is it means to the trust, to rely upon, to believe something. This is talking about what the result of faith is. 

If you walk into a crime scene and you see a pool of blood on the floor, what's your conclusion? That is the evidence of what? Of a murder. Okay, if you walk in and you see somebody who's got strong conviction and faith, that's the evidence of something else. It's not defining the faith. It's telling you this is the evidence of a spiritual life and a focus that lies behind that. That's what this focus is. It's the sustenance of things hoped for. We've studied this work hope again and again and again. It means a confident expectation. It's not just sort of a wishy-washy optimism or uncertain optimism that "Gee, I hope it rains again tomorrow. We've had a drought and it really didn't rain much today." 

I understand some of you got a lot of rain today. It didn't rain at my house. My flowers, my vegetables, my yard need more water. So I hope it rains tomorrow or I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow because I need to be involved in outdoor activities over the weekend so I hope…we don't know. That's how we use the word hope. 

But that's not how the Bible uses the word hope. The Bible uses the word hope for that conviction, that certainty; that you're more certain what's going to happen in eternity than you are about the route you take on the way home, or that you'll get home safely. 

Most of us think, "Yeah. I'm going to get home safely tonight."

We assume that every time we go anywhere that we're going to come back safely. But you should be more certain of what's going to happen to you in eternity than you are on how you're going to get home and are you going to get home safely. 

So faith is the substance of that future orientation which is our personal sense of an eternal destiny. It's the evidence of things not seen. It's not tangible.  You can't measure it. It's not an empirical thing. It has to do with the edification, the strength of your soul and that strength comes because it is grounded on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ and the Word of God; the living Word and the written Word. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:2 For by it

By what? This is an important term - by it, by faith. It is a feminine pronoun, which means it refers back to a feminine noun, which is faith. 

the elders

That is the old ones, the patriarchs, the ones who went before.

obtained a good testimony.

That should be introduction. Then we start seeing this phrase: by faith, by faith, by faith. Interestingly enough what you have been in verse 2 is the preposition en plus the pronoun which sets us up to understand how we're to understand just the simple dative case that follows. That is that it becomes the instrument or the means by which obstacles are overcome. It's faith. It's not just the act of trusting because everybody has faith. People believe in all kinds of things. Mormons believe in their thing; Muslims believe in their thing. Jehovah's Witness believe in their things. It's what you believe in. It's that body of truth that revelation: the Word that God has spoken, the revelation that came through Jesus Christ. That is the body of faith that we believe in. It starts with creation. It just walks all the way through here. 

There are 18 times we have "by faith" in this chapter and one time when it's "by it" which is by faith. So 19 times there's a reference to the fact that faith is the instrument for advancing through obstacles. 

We go through Genesis. We've already done that. We've gone through the whole book of Genesis so when we go through chapter 11 I'm going to avoid the temptation of drilling down as if I had never taught Genesis. So we're going to go through enough to capture the essence of what the writer is focusing on; but we're not going to do extensive detailed studies in each one of these individuals. 

We start off with creation, Abel, Enoch and Noah. That's all pre-flood. That's all before the flood in the first dispensation, the first age of the Gentiles. The same principle existed in that time period. It is by faith. 

Then you go into the age of Israel, the age of the patriarchs and then the age of Israel, the age of the nation itself, the age of the Law. So we go through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Those are the patriarchs and then Moses. From Moses we also look at the Exodus generation at the Red Sea, the conquest generation. Rahab makes the roll call. 

I'm always so encouraged by the people who make the Hall of Faith chapter here because when you look at some of these people, they failed miserably.  That ought to encourage us because a lot of us fail a lot more miserably than we think we do. Yet they found their way here. In some of them when we get down there to, for example, verse 32 talks about Gideon and Barak and Sampson and Jephthah. They had one or two moments when they focused on the Word of God and applied it. And they became a faith hero just one or two moments. The rest of their life is pretty much a spiritual wash out. But they rose to the occasion at the critical time and trusted God and they found their way here in here. So there's hope for the rest of us folks.

So we go through all these various Old Testament heroes and then at the end there is a summary. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:33 who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,

That gets into Daniel and his friends. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:34 quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:35 Women received their dead raised to life again.

Others were tortured, Isaiah for example.

And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.

What's their focus? What's their future focus? We're Living today in light of eternity. That's the main message in chapter 11. 

^NKJ Hebrews 11:39 And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith,

We have a different phrase here. It's not the by faith. It's now a dia plus the genitive with the article there.

did not receive the promise,

^NKJ Hebrews 11:40 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect

Or complete. That's a term that's used all through here. It has to do with focusing on maturity.

apart from us.

^NKJ Hebrews 12:1 Therefore we also,

Conclusion – now we get into the exhortation.

since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

That is all of these who have gone before. They had failures and they had problems. They had rebellious children and they had problem parents. They went through droughts and they went through retirement problems and they went to the loss of income and there's nothing you're going through that they didn't go through. A lot of what they went through was a lot harder than anything you're ever going to go through. So quit whining and wimping out like these Jews in the first century. Get with the program. 

That's the message. They went through really tough stuff. What got them through? It's the Word of God and the grace of God.

let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

Not the race you wish was. Not the race that's set before somebody else; but the race that is the circumstances that are set before you. Run that race with endurance.

^NKJ Hebrews 12:2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,

Of what? What's that word? Faith. See how that goes all the way through this section. Those of faith are focused on Jesus in 12:2. It's the same group that comes out of 10:39. If you don't connect those dots, you'll lose the forest for the trees. That's the thread that runs through this whole section. Jesus is the one who set the precedent for us in His spiritual life and especially at the cross.

who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

The cross wasn't the joy. It is once again living in light of eternity. The long-term destination was what strengthened Him to endure all of the pain of the cross so that He despised the shame (which means He just didn't regard it as something to worry about) and the result has been elevated to sit at the right hand of God the Father.

So verse 3, the challenge is to consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself.

^NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself,

Now if you're a first century former Jewish priest who's been getting kicked around and ridiculed and slandered and physically assaulted and robbed by your former friends and neighbors; all of a sudden this brings you up short because you're thinking about what Jesus went through. And none of us have ever suffered. We haven't even thought about suffering in any way like the Lord suffered leading up to the cross and definitely not on the cross. 

So we're to consider Him who endured hostility.

lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

When you get your eyes off of Jesus just like Peter did, you start sinking in the waves. We have to keep our focus on Jesus. But we all do that at times.  There's going to be discipline. That's the main idea in verses 3 through 11 - temporal discipline. But we can have recovery (12-17)

^NKJ Hebrews 12:12 Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees,

^NKJ Hebrews 12:13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.

All of this has to do with recovery and confession of sin and going forward. Then you get down into the last part of the chapter and it deals with the fact, this comparison that comes along between what we're enduring or actually what the original recipients endured in comparison, in contrast to those who came out of the Exodus.

^NKJ Hebrews 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels,

^NKJ Hebrews 12:23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect,

That's where we're headed.

^NKJ Hebrews 12:24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

 Now everybody in this room has gone through tough times. You've had losses. You've had deaths of people you love. You have had financial disasters.  You've lost jobs. There's not one of us in this room that hasn't gone through crisis. Sometimes we go through those crises we think that somehow excuses us to bailing out on the Christian life. But if you're standing before the Judgment Seat of Christ, and Abraham or Jephthah or David is standing over there watching and we say, "Well, you know it was a little rough for me." I don't know about you, but I don't think that is going to fly - not to mention what the Lord went through. 

So we have that peer Judge who went through what we do so all of our excuses just sort of evaporate, especially when it's abundantly clear at the time that we have everything that they had and more than the Old Testament saints had. We have been the indwelling Holy Spirit, the filling of the Holy Spirit, the completed canon of Scripture. So there's no excuse.

Then when we get to chapter 13. This is the final exhortation, the close out of the epistle as a whole, giving particular guidance and direction in different areas of the Christian life. The focus again is Jesus because Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. 

We should not be taken off course by various and strange doctrines. This is in 13:8-9.

^NKJ Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

^NKJ Hebrews 13:9 Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart

That here has the idea of the mind, the soul, the center of your being. 

be established by grace, not with foods which have not profited those who have been occupied with them.

In other words, legalistic observance of diet.

^NKJ Hebrews 13:10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

We have such tremendous privileges in Christ.  So he brings us right back to that "therefore."

^NKJ Hebrews 13:12 Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.

That is by means of His own death.

^NKJ Hebrews 13:13 Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach.

^NKJ Hebrews 13:14 For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.

Personal sense of destiny, living today in light of eternity. 

So he will conclude:

^NKJ Hebrews 13:15 Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.

^NKJ Hebrews 13:16 But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

And then the closing benediction, one of my favorites:.

^NKJ Hebrews 13:20 Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,

^NKJ Hebrews 13:21 make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

That summarizes those seven chapters of Hebrews in 38 minutes. That puts our focus as always on the Lord Jesus Christ and that what we endure is nothing compared to what He endured. Yet we're the ones who want to wimp out. But He's the one who strengthens us.

Let's bow our heads in closing prayer. 

Illustrations