Full Assurance

We'll hear ye the word of the Lord this afternoon. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

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 more 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. But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with suffering, 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, an abiding one.

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.

You may now be seated. Let me ask the

Lord's blessing over the preaching of his word. Father, we're so thankful for every blessing you have bestowed on our church, on our nation and our families.

Truly God, you are sovereign. And according to that good pleasure and will, we are here to gather together under the umbrella of your word to receive instruction, to offer up prayer and spiritual sacrifices, holy and pleasing to you.

Blessed and set this time apart, in Jesus' name we do pray, amen. Well, beloved,

I'm so glad to be here as my first word to the church as one of your new pastors.

Thankfully, the 49ers lost, so none of you are rushing home to watch the

Super Bowl. Um, maybe you'll still wanna see the game, but you'll have to wait until after we're done praying.

Amen? This morning I want you to consider with me the marvelous, wonderful, powerful, magnificent cross of Jesus Christ.

The cross for us is not just merely a symbol of our religion, a symbol of our faith, but is indeed the very citadel of salvation history.

Now I want you to consider with me this afternoon the wonder, the power of the cross.

In redemptive history, God has been working out the purification, the covering of sins to his people.

In the old covenant system, the people of God had a mechanism by which they were to be cleansed, made right with God, sanctified.

A cover was made and provided for sin through the sacrificial system of the temple, of the

Old Testament. And it's centered around the temple, the shedding of innocent blood in the form of goats and bulls.

In this system, one's sins, however, were not perfectly atoned for. It required a mediator in the form of a priest, a human priest.

And salvation was never understood to be individual, rather, collectively through the lens of the covenant of Abraham and the

Mosaic covenant on Sinai. See, the average person had little to no assurance or confidence in their personal standing before God.

And the reality is, dear friends, is that the majority of the world is still in that old system.

The majority of the world still lives in that old system, but instead of the temple sacrifices being the mechanism for redemption, for covering of sin, it's a woke religion of works where acceptance of the broken and sinful culture has become the altar by which you are now made accepted by the world.

It's become the altar by which you are accepted and loved by this age, by the power of the prince of this air.

Yet in the world, or what the world offers, truly has no lasting blessing or assurance, no confidence in the things that are eternal.

Just look at the way the culture is built today. If you believe everything that is being taught to you by the public school system, if you agree with the woke ideology of this age, but if something comes out from your past, maybe you said a word you shouldn't have said, or you made a statement that you shouldn't have made, there goes all your credentials.

And the world loves you a lot less. You see, the world is operating on a works -based salvation, a system that gives no true assurance to anyone.

But what do we have as Christians? According to the text that was just read in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 19, read that again with me, brothers and sisters.

In verse 19, it says, "'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.'"

You see, the cross of Jesus Christ offers us today an assurance and confidence that can sustain us even onto eternal life.

The marvel of the cross is not only that by it did Jesus accomplish such a new and wonderful thing of ridding us of the old system of its regulations, but it also cleansed and sanctified us to the uttermost part of our being.

The cross of Jesus is a reminder of the assurance of our redemption, and it is our confidence to approach the holy

God whose name is Jehovah. We have such a blessing through the new, living, and better way, which is

Christ. You see, in verses 19 and 20, we see that by means of the ministry of Jesus on the cross, we now have confidence.

Do you consider yourself a confident person? Maybe you consider yourself confident in some areas or in some capacity.

Maybe in other areas of life, you might consider yourself maybe not so confident. Many of us have different variations of personalities.

So, for instance, maybe some of you are an extrovert. It's really easy for you to go out there and meet new people, make new friends, and have small talks.

Maybe you're more of an introvert, and those things don't come as easily or naturally, and so it may be perceived that maybe you have a little bit less confidence.

Believe it or not, brothers and sisters, I would consider myself an introvert, and if not by the sanctifying work of the spirit in my life,

I wouldn't have much to say, and I wouldn't be able to approach people the way

I do, but the cross has fundamentally changed something in me, and I believe that the cross can fundamentally change things in you.

Now, that doesn't mean that the cross necessarily has to change your personality traits in that manner, but the cross, when it comes into the life of a believer, will not leave you in the same manner that it found you.

The cross of Jesus changes everything. Isn't it marvelous?

Isn't it wonderful, the power of the cross of Jesus? See, the

Greek word translated as confidence in Greek is parousia. Parousia is a

Greek word, which really sounds like a Spanish word, parousia, which basically means appearances, or to appear.

It's a very similar word, if not almost exactly the same. It's where the Spanish word comes from.

It's from the Greek, meaning appearance in Spanish, but in the Greek, it has even stronger meaning, meaning this, basically to be free to speak, unreserved in speech, fearless and bold.

See, again, our personalities, we may vary. Maybe we're confident, or maybe we're reserved.

Maybe we're bold, or maybe we're quiet. Maybe we're an extrovert, or maybe we're an introvert, but this confidence or boldness afforded to us by the cross, again, it's not a guarantee to change us in our personality traits, but instead, it gives us a confidence toward God.

The cross gives us an ability to have a confidence, an assurance that we, outside of the temple service, outside of the regulations of the

Mosaic system, have the ability to approach the

Lord God himself. What a blessing and privilege it is, then, to know the power of the cross, to be found in it, to marvel at it.

Now, it says in the text, we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus.

This is a clear callback to the temple service in Jerusalem, where only the priests had access to the holy spaces of the temple.

But now, in Christ, you have been included to draw near, to enter into holy space.

And the truth of the matter is, brothers and sisters, is that through Jesus and the work of the Spirit in us, anywhere and everywhere that we carry the gospel of Jesus becomes holy space.

And the world will be transformed by the power of the gospel that you and I bring.

This idea of being able to enter the holy spaces, the holy places, is a reference, clearly, to the

Old Testament system of the temple, but is now made and understood in a brilliant and new living way through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

So you can have assurance and confidence that God sees you, that God knows you, that God understands where you are presently in life.

He hears you, He knows you in Jesus. Christ's ministry of the cross opens this new and living way, since He is

Himself our great high priest over the household of God. So knowing

God and knowing Jesus is the key to eternal life.

See, our Lord, in the high priestly prayer in John 17 .3, He put it this way, this is eternal life.

There knowing you, the only true God, and the one whom you have sent forth,

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the way and the key to securing everlasting life.

He's the key to understanding and being able to approach Yahweh, the

God of the Old Testament, the God that when the Israelites saw His presence on that fearful and great day on Sinai, they trembled at His feet.

They were fearful. They had no assurance whether they would survive. Brothers and sisters, through the shed blood of Jesus, we have a cover, an offering for our sins.

And we can have confidence to approach the holy space, to approach the foot of God's mountain, and be ready for sacred service.

Verse 22 and 23, says 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.

See, the confidence that is ours in Christ beckons us to draw near to Him with a true heart in full assurance of faith, since we know that by the finished work of Christ, we have been purified with the washing of regeneration and have had our conscience cleansed to enjoy fellowship with the

Father. I'm preaching these words to you, but I don't know if you fully grasped the gravity of what the

Lord is revealing to us through these words. That you, in your brokenness, that you, in your fallen short state, you've been made washed, you've been made cleansed.

There's a full assurance that awaits you in the arms of our Savior. And that gives us, in turn, a clear conscience that allows us to hold fast the confession of our hope.

And what confession is that? Well, brothers and sisters, we're a confessional church, but I don't think the text is thinking about 18 or 1689.

Instead, the confession that our Lord is reminding us of here in the text is the confession that Paul writes about in John 10, where he says that if thou would confess the

Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

An assurance, a guarantee, not a maybe saved, not could be saved, not will be saved eventually, but saved by the

Lordship of Jesus. What a powerful, magnificent confession it is that we hold to.

And we hold fast to the confession of faith that Jesus Christ is Lord, even unto the glory of God the

Father. Therefore, we have this unwavering hope because he who promised is faithful.

He's faithful. He's faithful in ways that you and I can't even begin to imagine.

He's faithful in ways that we've only had small taste of here in this world.

Because the reality of our brokenness in this world is that even the best of us are not always true to our promises.

Sometimes we err, sometimes we fall away, sometimes we make mistakes because we're still under the bondage of this old wicked system to some degree.

But in reality, in Christ, you've been made washed, been cleaned, made new. But because of the realities of this world, we're not perfect, but Christ is.

And his promises are sure. And his promises will always deliver.

And so hold fast, hold fast to these promises. Hold fast to the confession of faith.

Since we who believe have received the purchase for our eternal salvation and promise, and he who delivered us promised to make us heirs of Christ.

So dear Christian, hold fast. When you're struggling in your marriage, hold fast.

When you're struggling with your children, hold fast. When you feel like you've reached the end and you can't go any longer, hold fast.

Because the Lord is faithful. And the truth of the matter is, he's been holding you fast this entire time because he's faithful.

And he loves you, and he knows you. He knows our broken condition. He's a good high priest who's able to sympathize with the people of God.

He's not a legalistic priest that's far away, locked away in a temple. He is one to whom we have access to moment by moment, day by day, night by night.

He is always on call. Verse 24 and 25. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love in good works.

This is like a pastor's favorite text here, by the way. Verse 25, 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.

See, our confession, our assurance, our confidence stirs us to love in good works in the greater community of the redeemed.

And that's the church. We share a common assurance.

We have a common confidence and a common hope. Therefore, dear

Christian, don't grow cynical when it comes to your church participation.

Don't grow weary in doing that which the Lord has commanded us to do.

Don't grow weary in putting up and loving the brotherhood. Don't grow weary in these things.

But as we see the day drawing near, it ought to motivate us all the more to be together, gathered as saints.

You know, I gotta say this to you guys. I'm really impressed of you guys. The church asks a lot from you.

And there's commitments that it requires of you. And yet, you're here.

In this world that is so noncommittal, here you are, even after a whole morning service and lunch where maybe some of you may be feeling the effects of that lunch, you're still here.

And so praise God for that. And this is a good report from me to you that I appreciate that and I see that.

But let's not grow weary in doing so as is the habit of some.

To some folks in American Christianity, churches are something you do on Sunday mornings, but once the football game is starting, the people start looking at their watches and they're getting antsy, and they wanna go on with their day.

Well, brothers and sisters, we know that we have such great confidence with the Lord and with each other that we don't just consider this a service.

This is family. This is family time. And it's so good to be with the family of God, is it not?

You know, I heard a preacher once say, and it left a profound effect on me, and it's based upon the text here, that there are really two days that matter.

Today, while it is still called day, if you hear His voice referred to the

Spirit, do not harden your hearts as in the days of rebellion. So today matters.

What you do with your day matters. But there's another day that's even more important, and it's that day, that day, when the

Lord comes forth in glory to gather all the redeemed. That day, as it draws near, don't grow weary in fulfilling your obligation in your ministry to the

Lord who has called you, who has saved you, and who has brought you into this marvelous grace.

Yet this comes with a profound warning in verse 26.

And we're not gonna have time to go into, to go verse by verse into all of this, but give you the abridged version.

But it says in 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 more 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? Here's the warning. A lifestyle in pursuit of sin is the destructive fruit of the old nature.

It leads us to doubt, to fear, anxiety, and an expectation of judgment.

And the warning here for us all, even as the redeemed, even as the elect, is clear.

Don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look back to the world where your old life was, where the old promises was, where you might think, what would have been life if I would have gone to this school?

How about if I would have married that person? How about if I would have done this differently? How about, how about, how about, how about we just focus on the cross?

How about that? And brothers and sisters, if we allow ourselves to look back, you know,

Jesus said this, he who puts his hand to plow and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom of God.

That is to say that if you put your hand on the plow representing the kingdom of God and the kingdom work that comes with it, but if you keep looking back, you won't have success.

You won't have the blessing. And why? Well, it's kind of like this, you know, can you, can you drive on, what's the highway up here?

What's this, like take us to Mopedus. What number? 101? Anyways, you guys know.

You guys know. If you're on the 101 and all you do is looking back, how long before you're in an accident and there's complete disaster and calamity?

Probably not long. And the same is true of us in Christ.

We should not keep our eyes back, but eyes forward, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

So with our eyes set on Jesus, on this good gospel of his death, burial and resurrection, you and I can have full assurance that our sins have been paid for, that the old self and your old sins and your old inclinations have been nailed to the cross.

And as a result of that, we can proclaim of great assurance as did the apostle

Paul in Romans 8, 1, when he said, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

No condemnation. You stand not condemned, but you stand justified and sanctified by the spirit of grace.

Therefore, do not go back to that which God has saved you from, but go towards that which

God saved you onto. And it is the work of the kingdom, this great kingdom.

For he says in verse 30, for we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the

Lord will judge his people. He says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living

God. But recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with suffering, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners of those so treated.

For you have 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.

What a privilege, what a blessing. You see, the

Christian life is one of full assurance, but it is not an easy path.

It is by no means easy. You know, praise God for the fact that many of you who have been here for months and years have received good biblical teaching and instruction from Pastor Josh and Pastor Conley.

So I don't have to work on telling you how bad is prosperity gospel that has infected this country and the world.

I don't have to contend with you on that. You know already. God has not just called us to a nice life, an easy life, but a difficult one.

But in the difficulty of life, you can have full assurance, knowing that ultimately, you and I, through the gospel of Jesus, we win, we win.

Maybe in the future, I've got this great series on Revelation I'll share with you guys in the future, but the cliff notes are basically this.

Jesus wins, and we're joined to him in that victory. And so friends, have full assurance that in the midst of even your trials and your sufferings and the difficulty of this life and world, we can have confidence, assurance, blessed assurance, no need to look back.

I want you to fall into God's grace, not into his wrath. For he did say, vengeance is mine,

I will repay. So fall not into the temptations of this old wicked system, but fall into the hands of a merciful

God. And it's through this confession, it is through this assurance that we attain through the cross, that we can overcome such burdens of life, such afflictions.

See, we are called to suffer as Christians, and we will suffer for doing what is right in God's eyes, because his ways are wrong in the eyes of this world.

And as long as we're doing what God requires of us, we should expect some level of pushback from the culture, from the politics, from the school systems.

We should, it should not be strange amongst us brothers and sisters that we see such things in this world.

But we hold fast, we have assurance. You see, the injustices that we face in this world is but the cross that we have been commanded to carry by our

Lord. And we endure under such burdens because we have full assurance that we have a better and abiding possession.

Notice again when it says in verse 34, 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.

That is to say that these Christians, their eyes were set not on the past, but on the future.

Not upon that which was in Egypt, but that which was in heavenly Jerusalem. Their eyes were not set upon the possessions that they had in the bank or in their home, but rather that eternal unfading reward that belongs to all of us who obey and belong to the

Lord Jesus. There is a better and abiding possession for you and I if we follow in his footsteps.

Therefore, in closing, verse 36 says, actually verse 35 says, therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

Think of the Christian life not as a sprint, but as a marathon.

And you're gonna get tired. There'll be times in which you may fall. There'll be times in which you question and in which you doubt.

But brothers and sisters, have assurance that if your sins have been paid for on the cross of Jesus, there's nothing to look back to, only forward.

Because we have a better and abiding possession. And it goes on to say this in verse 36, for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.

See, there's a better and abiding possession based upon what was promised. And as we've already established,

God is faithful. And his promises will be fulfilled. Goes on to quote from the scriptures in verse 37, 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. So there's an imperative, but there's also a warning that comes of that.

But verse 39, I find much comfort in. Because look at what the scripture says there.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed.

The elect of Jesus are not those who will shrink back and be destroyed, but rather those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Brothers and sisters, beloved, take courage, be of good cheer, that we are not like those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who have full and blessed assurance that Jesus Christ is

Lord. With that same mind, heart, and spirit, let us pray together with that same blessed and full assurance, knowing that not only are we gathered to pray, but that our prayers have power and significance.

Live in it. And together as saints, let's pray together with that assurance because Jesus is

Lord. Let me pray for us real quick. Father, I just thank you. As we now begin to turn our time and attention towards praying together as brothers and sisters, as fellow saints, heirs of the promise, that our petitions would be heard by you and received by you, give us in this moment your spirit, your most holy spirit, to work in us that which is pleasing in your sight as we lift up these prayer requests and as we not forsake the gathering, but incite each other to love and good works all the more as we see the day drawing near.