New Life In Christ
Hebrews 10:19-25 ·November 20, 2022· Joel Passmore
Part of: Hebrews
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Good morning again. If you don't know my name, my name is Joel. I'm happy to be serving as pastor here at New Creation. We're continuing in a sermon series that we've started. This is the fourth week of that. It's a sermon series on our core values. The core values are the things that we don't want to compromise along the way, the things that we want to true up to in case we get a little bit confused or lost. They're our North Star, which of course God's our North Star, but the values that he says in his word, these are the things we want to true up to in our ministries. So we covered the four core values are on the back of the bulletin if you want to look at them. They're the Bible, the gospel, discipleship, and unity. I preached a couple sermons on the gospel, a sermon on the Bible, and today I'm preaching about discipleship. Now I was thinking back to when our daughters were toddlers. They're 13 and they're 14 now. Don't worry.
One thing that hits you when you are parenting, maybe just me, maybe I was especially naive, but you have to teach them so much and over and over and over you have to teach them. Just take eating, for example. You have to teach them that's not food. What's food and what isn't food? You have to teach them how to hold a utensil, how to use a utensil. You have to teach them to take it easy, slow down on the food that you really love, especially the sweet stuff. You have to teach them it's good to eat things that you don't like if it has nutrition in it. You have to teach them how all of this stuff influences their body and how they feel. You have to teach them, if that all weren't enough, you have to teach them to be grateful for the food that they have.
I remember that in particular surprised me. Oh, they have to learn how to be grateful. Gratitude doesn't just pour out of them. Once new life begins, there's a process of learning, there's a process of growing, and there's a process of walking in that new life. So that's what discipleship is. Put simply, discipleship is walking in the new life that Christ has brought us into. It's learning to think and to feel and to act like the new creation that we already are.
This is a topic that's got many sides. I'm not going to cover everything. It would be impossible today in one sermon to do that, but today's passage gives us a really helpful overview of what discipleship is all about. It clearly reminds us that these new practices come out of what Christ has already accomplished. So we're in Hebrews today, Hebrews 10, verses 19 through 25. Turn with me in your Bibles. Look on the screen. It's also in your bulletin. This is the Word of God for us today. Let's pay attention to it. Let's trust it, because it comes from God, and He is trustworthy.
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 assurance, with a true heart and 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 promises 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. The Word of the Lord for us today. Pray with me, please. God, thank You for Your Word. We know that by Your Spirit, it changes us and shapes us. We want to be not just hearers of the Word, but doers. So help us to, Lord, to pay attention to what You're saying to us today, through Hebrews 10. Thank You for this gift. Thank You for calling us to Yourself.
Work among us. Jesus, we pray this in Your name. Amen. The title that I'm giving for today's sermon is this, New Life in Christ, Nurtured in Faith, Grounded in Hope, and Stirred Up to Love. Now, this passage is really packed. It's actually one sentence in Greek. The translators kind of spare us from that and add some punctuation, but it's one long sentence in Greek. It all goes together. Together. We're going to start with this. Christ has brought about new life. This is verses 19 through 21. We're going to unpack it by following the structure that the author has put into this passage.
There's two statements of facts that begin with the phrase, since we, in the passage. Look there and see if you can find them. Since we. Since we have. After that comes three appeals with the phrase, let us. Three times you see let us there. Since we have this, let us do this. The appeals, the exhortations, the actions are grounded in what's true. It's like this. Since you have room for all of us in your car, let's take your car on the trip. It's like that. The since we informs the let us.
The first one's this. Since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus. This means that through Christ, we now belong in Christ's presence. We now belong. We have an authorization, permission to come before the Lord. The door is open and we're welcome. This might not strike you as all that special. You may be kind of used to it by now. Maybe if you've been a Christian for a while, you're thinking, this is not really hitting you very much. But it's incredibly, incredibly special. Unbelievable, really, that we would have access to God.
The recipients of this letter knew that we did not deserve to be in God's presence. They were Jewish Christians. That was the main recipients of this letter. That's why it's called the letter to the Hebrews. Before, the law of Moses told them what to bring as an acceptable sacrifice into God's temple. Now they had no sacrifice, or so they thought. They might have been walking in and thinking, my hands are empty. I haven't brought a sacrifice. Can I really come into God's presence?
Am I really allowed? They also knew that there was a curtain, a heavy curtain in the temple that was hung that separated this room that was called the Holy of Holies, the most holy place from every other part of the temple. And that curtain was put there by God. He said to put it there because that room was the room in which he would come at the altar and accept the sacrifices. And his holiness was a fearful thing to people who were sinful. The priests, only the great high, only the one high priest would bring in the sacrifices into that room and let them be offered before God. This heavy curtain was there. So these readers would know these two things. I used to have a sacrifice and I used to not go in there. So is it true that we really can? Well, the author of Hebrews is saying, yes, you can. Christ has opened up a way through the curtain by his flesh, by his sacrifice, a new and living way. He's done it by becoming the once for all sacrifice for sin. Now friends, you might not be a naturally confident person. Some people have it. Some people seem to lack confidence. But that's okay. This is not talking about your confidence. This is not talking about charisma or your own self-assurance. If you're in Christ, you have this confidence given to you. Whether or not you know it, you have it to come into God's presence. It comes from outside. The second thing that says that it says here is since we have a great priest over the house of God. The priests were the ones that represented the people before God
who brought in the sacrifices. That's Jesus now. He is both the priest and the sacrifice. It's incredible. He's both of those things. He opened the way and he went ahead of you and he comes in bearing his own scars. Father, this is the sacrifice. It's once for all completed. The father accepts that. The way is open now. Christ has done it. He always lives to make intercession for his people. So that's kind of a summary. That's a summary of what's come before in several chapters in Hebrews. That's the therefore that starts this passage. Now we come to the point in which we start applying this to our lives. What do we do now? If we're trusting in that sacrifice, how should we live? Now this is going to be basically an extended application section of a sermon. Okay? Just like any application, you're going to hear things that encourage you, things that you feel convicted by. I want you to remember discipleship is lifelong. It's meant to be practiced our whole lives. We don't ever get perfected. But I want you to know, remember, think of what we heard earlier. Jesus said that he came to make our joy complete.
He's telling us to obey him, to abide in him, to follow his commandments, to make our joy complete. He gives us these instructions to bless us. Okay, so here's the first one. Nurtured in faith. Verse 22. The first let us is this. Let us draw near with a true heart. Our life is to be marked by a close fellowship with God. And you may say, ah, okay, I did that once. I accepted Christ as my Savior. But new life is more than that. Meaning, it's not just that one decision. It's a lifelong relationship. I walked down the aisle with Nikki after we took our vows, but that was just the beginning of our relationship. Imagine how silly it would be if someone asked me, Joel, how's your marriage? And I said, well, yeah, 20 years ago, we had a great day. It was beautiful. We walked down the aisle. Period. And I didn't say anything else. You'd say, well, what about the rest of your, of those 20 years? Right? It's not just one time. It's ongoing. It's an ongoing practice. A more wordy translation of this would be, let us continue to draw near. To continue to draw near.
This is beyond how full your calendar is with churchy stuff. It's beyond that. That's why it says with a true heart. This is a heart posture that it's asking for. It's a heart that's sincere. A heart that desires to be close to God himself. A heart that wants to be shaped by him, filled by his presence. That's what we're called to have. Let's draw near with that kind of heart. Church, God says that we are his adopted children by faith. But let's not think of ourselves as adult children.
Grown up, out of the house, out in the world trying to make it on our own, building our own household, calling to check in every now and then. How's it going, Dad? Just want to tell you that I'm okay. Let's think of ourselves as little children. Little children that still are in the home. Brought into the household of God. Sitting at our father's table. Dependent on him for everything and still under his influence every day. That is our level of need. That's his level of care for us.
And that should be how we approach him. Now we all know why this is written here. We tend to drift away, right? We've all done it. Let's just admit it. We all drift away. It happens. Sometimes we get complacent because things are going fine in our lives. We start getting a little self-reliant. We get busy. We get distracted. Other times, it's because we've been hurt. And in our woundedness, we pull back and we stop going to God. But either way, we start feeling guilty about it, don't we? And we come to him even less.
If that's where you are today, I just want to say, draw near to God again. The solution to the problem is right here. It's just to do what you've been avoiding doing. Draw near to God again. Come to him with as much assurance as you have in your heart, with as true of a heart as you have. And say to him, here I am, Lord. My needs are great, but I know that you're greater. Your mercy is greater. Here I am. Help me find my rest and my peace in you.
To help us in this, God's given us here another reminder. Another reminder of his work is put into this verse. It's buried in this verse, at the very end of this verse, to remind us why we should come again. That guilt that's holding you back from coming back to God, after however long it's been, there's something in this verse to help you get past that guilt. And it's this. Our hearts have been sprinkled clean, and our bodies have been washed. Those are things that have happened in the past that are still true of you now, if you're in Christ.
This is what gives you the confidence to enter, no matter how long it's been. Since you've been close to God. We should draw near today and every day. The second thing is this. We're to be grounded in hope. This is verse 23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope. As we follow Christ, there's going to be storms. There's going to be trials, temptations. There's going to be difficulties. To endure these things faithfully, we have to hold on to something.
If there's a force that's pushing against you, if the wind is blowing really hard, you have to have something under your feet so that you can push back and resist that force. That thing under your feet is the confession of your hope. That's why we must hold fast to it. And this is not something that we've invented to make ourselves feel better. This is not some mantra.
Our hope is not the world's hope. It's not hope in technology. It's not hope in science or medicine or government. It's hope that's based in God's actions in the past. And what he has promised that he will do today and in the future. That's our hope. That's where our hope is. And all of it, all of it centers on Jesus. The word made flesh who is our hope.
And where do we learn these things? Where do we learn these things? The word of God. They're not discovered anywhere else. It's there in the word that we learn about God's character, his actions, his redemptive work. If we're going to hold fast to the confession of our hope, we have got to saturate our minds and our hearts in the word of God. It's the only place that we're going to be reminded the ground upon which we stand. It's only there that we learn that God has said through the prophet Jeremiah, I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
It's only in God's word that we learn of Jesus, who told his disciples, in this world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I've overcome the world. It's only in scripture that we learn of this promise, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus. And it's only, only in the Bible that we get this vision of the future, the new heavens and the new earth. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.
And neither shall be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. And also he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. Now this last one, this was a little bit of a fun one to discover, as I was preparing for this. Do you see the intentional gift that comes at the end of this? He gets a vision of the new heavens and the new earth.
God's people, one, with God. No more crying, no more pain, no more sin, no more death. It's all gone. And then God says, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. God knows that we will need endurance. He knows that we will need it. And so he gives us trustworthy and true words to strengthen us. Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. Why did God command that? Because he knew that you, today, needed to hear it.
That's why it's written down for you. Church, we have got to saturate ourselves in the word of God. God, that's where you're reminded of the steadfast and sure anchor that you have for your hope. That's what grounds you in hope today and allows you to keep enduring.
We should study it and we should cherish it and we should seek him in it because it builds us up in the confession of our hope. He who promised is faithful. Let's find out together just how faithful he is by looking at this book and letting it give us solid assurance of our faith, solid assurance of God's character whenever we forget, because we do forget.
The last one is this. We're stirred up to love. This is my last one. It's going to be just a little bit longer because there's more here and because I just love it. So you're going to have to just allow me this. The third aspect is this. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Now the other two leaned more towards the individual, right? But now we are definitely talking about other people being involved, right? Other people are involved.
God's people have a role to play in each other's discipleship. That's the first thing to see here. We're supposed to influence each other. Now, one time in elementary school, I got the progress report, and at the school that I was at, teachers would just choose from a pre-selected list of comments to put in there. So my best friend and I were comparing what we got, and I was like, I said, oh, she wrote on mine, distraction to others. What about you?
And my friend said, she wrote negatively influenced by peers. And I was like, hey, wait a minute. That's me. I showed up on two people's report cards, mine and my friend's. I could have used some teaching on this verse, probably. My influence wasn't good. Nevertheless, we are called to have influence on each other. We're supposed to stir up one another. This is literally like be a provocation to. Agitate. To agitate one another. Now, this implies something that we all know to be true.
On our own, we tend to settle. We get complacent. We get comfortable. Right? We need a little friendly and godly agitation from our sisters and brothers to get moving again. We're like a jug of orange juice. When you take it out of the fridge, you got to shake it up again before you pour it out. Or kids, here's another one. What do you need to make hot chocolate? You need the packet, the packet of hot chocolate. You need a cup. You need hot water.
Marshmallows, of course. What else do you need? You need a spoon. You ever had hot chocolate without a spoon? And you're just staring at it? And that cocoa is just floating on the top in a big mass? And you're like, oh, I really want to drink this hot chocolate, but this is going to be awful. It's going to be slightly chocolatey water with a bunch of dry powder. You've got to have a spoon. Right? We need to be stirred up to be at our best. That's what this passage is getting at.
I need it. You need it. You need a spoon in your life, and that is the people that are sitting around you. You've got to be stirred up to love and good works. This stirring up that's called for here, it's not accomplished by recklessness, by just charging in there, speaking the first thing that comes to your mind. Did you see that? It's accomplished by careful thought. Let us consider how. That's actually the command. Consider how to stir up one another.
Consider could be translated contemplate. So here it is. You're supposed to think about other people that are around you, particularly the people that you are walking with in the same body of Christ, like the people out here. You're supposed to think about them, their personality, their giftings, their passions. How could they serve? How could they help? How could they grow? And then you're supposed to think about the setting that we're in. What needs are around us?
What act of love could serve someone? Who needs to be served? What needs to be done? You're supposed to bring those two things together in careful thought and say, oh, I've got a good idea. And now you're ready to be that spoon to stir people up, to love and good works, to make them at their best. Now, I love stirring people up. It's one of my favorite things to do as a pastor. I love it. But it doesn't take a pastor to do it. These are not commands given to pastors or elders.
These are commands given to every Christian. Every Christian. What we have here is a very remarkable exhortation for all believers. Think carefully about how to rouse each other to be active in love and good works. That's the command. That's discipleship for you. Paul wrote this, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Church, we're to help one another find the path to walk those good works. There it is. There's the path. I know you can do it. Or if someone's already on that path, you say, keep at it. God's with you. Don't worry about the results. Keep at it. Be faithful to your Savior. God's going to use you.
Our culture is very, very individualistic. Extremely individualistic. If you're a follower of Jesus, I'm just here to tell you, if you haven't already encountered this, eventually the biblical pattern of discipleship, like this verse, is going to collide with your individualism. And one of those things will yield.
It is a great and glorious thing for our individualism to diminish for the sake of following Christ, for the sake of your brothers and sisters. It's a wonderful thing for that to happen. We've heard earlier that Jesus said, by this my Father is glorified, that you should bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. Our fruit bearing matters to Jesus, and we learn in this verse, it's supposed to matter among all of us. We're supposed to care about it for you.
For you. You're supposed to care about it for me. Now there's two ways. There's two other parts of this verse that are given to help us in this. And that's this. Do not neglect to meet together and encourage one another.
I'm good? Do not neglect to meet together and encourage one another. I thought my time was up. Do not neglect to meet together and encourage one another. One reason why God brings us together and calls us to physically meet together is so that we can have this kind of godly influence on each other. You can't stir up the hot chocolate if the spoon is in the drawer. If it's in the drawer and the hot chocolate's on the counter, you still got nothing.
You got no hot chocolate. The spoon's got to get out of the counter. It's got to get in there, in the mug, and stir up. Friends, we need each other. Don't neglect the gathering of the church. Don't neglect it. You need to be stirred up. Others here need you to stir them up. Don't neglect the gathering together of the church. This is a time for us to stir one another up. Let us not neglect to meet together as is the habit of some, this passage says.
Zoom is not enough. Watching sermons on YouTube are not enough. You and your Bible alone in your room, that's a great thing, but that's not all that there is to your discipleship. We need to stir one another up. And this holy agitation is not to be done in anger. It's not to be done in frustration. It's not to be done by shaming, by telling people, come on, get your act together. Tired of being the only one carrying these chairs. That's not how we stir each other up.
At least not according to this passage. It's done by reminding each other of the since we truths that we heard about. Since we have confidence, since we have a great priest, and gently reminding them of the let us applications. Let us draw near. Let us hold fast. Let us consider how. It's done by encouragement. We're supposed to encourage one another. That's the posture we're supposed to have. One of the most amazing things that I've been witnessing this year, especially over the past six months, is how all of you have been stirred up to love and good works.
There are so many ways in which I'm seeing people stirred up right now. This holy agitation. The hot chocolate's really getting whipped up and it's tasty. As people are diving in and doing things that they weren't doing before. They weren't doing at their prior church. They weren't doing ever before. They've taken on responsibility, taking on tasks and roles. I'm seeing people stirred up and it is amazing. It's amazing to see that. And let's continue to stir each other up.
And all the more as we see the day drawing near. Because it is drawing near. It is. Every day, we're one day closer to the return of Christ. We don't know when it'll be, but it's getting closer every minute.
Until he comes, let's continue earnestly in discipleship. Let us draw near to God in faith. Let's hold on to the confession of our hope and let's consider how we can stir one another up to love and good works. Because Christ has opened a new and living way through the curtain by his sacrifice. For our sake.
Friends, pray with me. Lord God, help us first of all to see our discipleship not as a chore, but as a great blessing. As a taste of what you have already accomplished in us.
Lord, you have done an amazing thing through your Son by calling people to yourself, by washing them, by sanctifying them, by opening the way through the curtain. Lord, help us to see our discipleship as a way that we can offer thanks and praise to you, a way that we can step in and learn what it means to be a new creation. Help our thinking and our feeling and our acting to be influenced by you, God. Help us to reach out and take hold of all these blessings that you're offering us, Lord.
Help us to put our faith into practice. Help us to draw near with a true heart. Help us to hold fast to the confession of our hope. And Lord, help us to stir up one another, to consider how we can encourage one another to love and good works. God, you are very good. The new creation that we see around us, it is your work and you are very good for doing it, God. I praise you today. Help us to see it more and more. Jesus, we pray this in your name.