He Who Promised is Faithful – Hebrews 10:23

Hebrews 10:19-25 and the Call to Hold Fast

Now, we turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10, and we're going to read together verses 19 -25. Hebrews 10, beginning at verse 19,. "'Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil that is His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having 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 stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.'".

Let's pray before we begin. Father, it is now our desire that You would speak to us through Your Word. We have sung to You our praise and our adoration and expressed our affection, and we have spoken of Your great attributes, and we pray now that as we look at Your Word and give our hearts and attention to considering Your faithfulness, that You would bless our time of study in Your Word, help us to see the implications of this great glorious doctrine of the faithfulness of our God, and help us to live in light of it, and to hold fast to our hope without wavering firm into the end because of it.

We pray that it may be a motivation for us and that we may see it as the motivation that it truly is. Be honored here through our consideration of these things and our time, and we pray that Your Word and the preaching of it might bless our hearts and draw the lost to faith in Christ and edify and equip the believers who need to know and who need to be comforted by the faithfulness of our God.

We pray this in Christ's name, amen. Well, before I begin, I need to correct an error that I made last week, and a number of people mentioned this and were gracious enough to point it out, so I need to set the record straight about something.

And the only way to do this is just to be blunt about it. Dory was not a clownfish. A number of people pointed that out, first and foremost, some of my own children over lunch. So, I called Dory a clownfish and I blew that, my apologies.

She's actually a blue tang or a royal blue tang or a Pacific blue tang, sorry, blue tang fish. Scientifically, I would refer to it as a paracanthropus hepatus. I'd prefer that name. And you, I'm wondering, Jim, how much of your week did you spend trying to get the pronunciation of that right?

So that's the scientific name, and I would say it again, but I stuck the landing on that first time through, and I'm not going to try it again. The fish is also known as a surgeon fish because I have no idea.

You wouldn't even think that it would be a good idea to have a fish with that kind of memory operating on anybody, but it is called a surgeon fish. So I apparently need to spend more time with Pixar movies in sermon prep.

That's the lesson we can all learn. Now we are back in verse 23, and we've spent two full weeks now looking at what it means to hold fast the confession of our hope and how to do so without wavering. And so we did that, and we are reviewing this section that has the three let us phrases, the three let us exhortations, let us draw near, let us hold fast, and let us consider how we are to prompt one another, to stimulate one another to love and to good deeds.

And we are to do this in light of the fact that we have this confidence that we have direct access to God. We are to do this in light of the fact that we have a great high priest over the household of God, and this is to motivate us to draw near to him, to hold fast to the confession of our hope, and then to encourage others to do that same thing.

And drawing near means to hold tight, and we are to hold tight to the confession. Remember that objective body of truth that is outside of us, the gospel truth, what we all agree together and confess that results in our salvation.

That is what we are to hold fast to. That is the grounding of our hope, which is not a wish. It's not a wishful thinking. It's not wish casting. It's actually a confident expectation that we have. Our hope is something future primarily.

We have a future hope. We have a present hope. We have an anchor for our soul, which is our hope that we look forward to and we are anticipating in the future. That is our hope. And so it's not simply what we just wish for.

All of that hope that we have is grounded in the person and the work of Jesus Christ, what he has done on our behalf. That is our confident expectation. We are anticipating it. It is certain. And because it is certain, you and I are called to hold fast to that without wavering.

And that word means without wavering, without bending or without leaning or without being inclined towards the fashions of the fickle or the whims of the world. We are to stand strong and to hold fast and to not waver and to not bend and to not compromise.

That's what we are called to do. And that's what we've covered so far. Now, today we need to look at the motivation for this. So we've looked at the exhortation, let us hold fast the confession of our hope.

Then we have to look at the explanation of that. We are to do this without wavering. And today then we are looking at the motivation that we are to do this with. For he who promised is faithful. And this is the last phrase of verse 23 and we will get through the end of this verse.

Today.

We are to do this because God who has promised is faithful. So now the question becomes, how is it that God's faithfulness motivates me to hold fast? Because that seems to be the motivation that He gives you.

You are to do this for because of the view to the fact that God Himself who has promised these things, our hope, He is faithful. So we are to hold fast because He is faithful. But this passage seems to be describing our faithfulness, does it not?

Isn't it our faithfulness that is in view? You are to hold fast without wavering. Doesn't that describe your faithfulness? So how is it that a verse that speaks of my faithfulness, my necessity to be faithful, or the necessity for me to be faithful, how is it that that is motivated by the fact that God Himself is faithful?

Because the author holds out the faithfulness of God as a motivation for our own faithfulness. So verse 23, we are to hold fast because He who promised is faithful. Want you to read together with me again verse 23 and I'm going to take this opportunity to take my watch off because my family is obviously texting me.

Verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for He who promised is faithful. You are to hold fast because He is faithful. You are able to be faithful and you are able to hold fast because God Himself, the one who has made the promises Himself, He is faithful.

Now we speak and sing of the faithfulness of God. Scripture repeatedly affirms the faithfulness of God. We read of the repeated affirmations of God's faithfulness in Psalm 89. And in Psalm 89 that word faithfulness comes up over and over again as the psalmist reflects upon the degradation of the nation of Israel and yet he looks back to God's faithful promise and His promise to David and reflects upon the fact that God Himself will be faithful to fulfill everything that He said to David.

And the psalmist reflects upon the faithfulness of God as an encouragement for him to have hope even in the promises of God because He who promised is faithful. So today we're going to have the opportunity to consider some of the implications of this great truth of God's faithfulness.

We sing of it, we announce it, we rest upon it, and listen, your salvation is dependent.

Upon it.

Your salvation ultimately is not dependent on your ability to be faithful to Him. Your salvation is dependent upon the willingness and the power and the nature and character of God to be faithful to what it is that He has promised.

So this word faithful, it comes from a family of words and it related to that as the word belief or faith or trust. When it's describing the act of having faith, it would be translated as believing or having faith or trusting, having faith in something, being faithful when it's used as an adjective as it is here of God.

It describes being faithful or trustworthy, somebody who is worthy of trust. It doesn't describe somebody who is full of faith. It describes somebody who is worthy of full faith, you can think of it that way.

It's not describing God as being one who himself is full of faith, but it's describing one who is worthy of our full faith. When it is used of sayings, or sorry, the word is used of sayings in the New Testament like it is a trustworthy or faithful saying that if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it's a fine work that he desires to do.

It's used in Scripture of people, Paul refers to our faithful brother Timothy and Tychicus. Paul refers to a faithful servant or a faithful slave. It's used of Jesus in the book of Hebrews who is called a faithful high priest.

And it's used of God here in this context that he who promised is faithful. Describes one not who is himself believing, in other words, God is not believing, that's not what we mean when we say that God is faithful, but that rather God is the one who is worthy of our full faith and worthy of our belief and our confidence and our trust because he is faithful.

So God is faithful not in that he is full of faith and we would describe ourselves as being full of faith, but we wouldn't describe a God as being full of faith or even having faith in the same way that you and I do because God doesn't have faith.

There's nothing, there's no one and nothing for God to have faith in. He is the sole object of saving faith and he is the sole one who is faithful in the fullest. Scripture repeatedly affirms this truth of God's faithfulness and I'm going to read to you a list of verses with a few short comments between some of them and I just want you, and this is just obviously a small sampling of what Scripture says concerning God's faithfulness, but I want you to hear the repeated affirmations of God's faithfulness and how the authors of Scripture connect the faithfulness of God to some of his various promises.

Psalm 33, verse 4, for the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. Psalm 36, 5, your loving kindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

Psalm 54, verse 5, he will recompense the evil to my foes, destroy them in your faithfulness. God's destruction of his enemies is an expression of his faithfulness. Very few Christians, very few people put those two things together.

God's destruction of his enemies is an expression of his faithfulness. You and I, when God destroys the wicked, will say, that is exactly what a loving and just and righteous and holy and faithful God does.

He keeps his promises. Because God has promised to destroy those who will not repent and believe, when he destroys them, he will be doing so as an expression of his faithfulness to his own nature and his own character, to his own justice.

Psalm 91, verse 4, he will cover you with his pinions and under his wings you will seek refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a bulwark. Psalm 100, verse 5, the Lord is good. His loving kindness is everlasting and his faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 119, verse 90, your faithfulness continues throughout all generations. You establish the earth and it stands. The continual repetition of the earthly cycles, the fact that the earth today stands as it does is an expression of God's faithfulness.

First Corinthians 119, coming into the New Testament, God is faithful through whom you are called into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ. Notice there the calling of God and salvation as an expression or reflection on God's faithfulness.

First Thessalonians 5, 24, faithful is he who calls you and he will also bring it to pass. Second Thessalonians 3, verse 3, faithful is, but the Lord is faithful and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.

Second Timothy 2, 13, if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. Jesus is called faithful in Hebrews 3, verse 2. He was faithful to him who appointed him as Moses was over all his house.

Hebrews 3, verse 6, Christ was faithful as a son over his house whose house we are if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end. Revelation 1, 5 describes Jesus Christ as the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

Revelation 3, verse 4, to the angel of the church in Laodicea write the amen, the faithful and true witness, that's Christ. Revelation 19, 11, I love this verse, and I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse and him who sat on it is called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and makes.

War.

Do you see the destruction of God's enemies? It's connected to his faithfulness. Your salvation is connected to his faithfulness. His judgment is connected to his faithfulness. All his works are done in faithfulness, all of them.

God cannot be unfaithful because faithfulness is essential to his nature and character. When we talk about the faithfulness of God, what we're talking about is something that is true of God because of all of the sum total of all of his other attributes.

So we don't talk about the faithfulness of God like we talk about his omniscience or his omnipotence or his holiness. We don't talk about faithfulness in those terms. We talk about faithfulness of God because the faithfulness of God is what is true of him because all of the other things are true of him.

So for instance, God is true and he is truth because God is righteous and he is perfect and he is omniscient and he is omnipotent because he is all wise and because he is eternal. Because God cannot lie and because he cannot deny himself and because he is perfect and because he is immutably perfect.

That is, in his perfection he cannot and he does not change. Since there is no change in God's nature or his character, what we see when we behold God in his attributes is his faithfulness. He does not change.

His nature does not change, his character does not change, his purposes do not change, his promises do not change, his intentions do not change. Our God does not change. And so what does that look like to us when we behold that or when we experience it?

It looks like faithfulness. He keeps his word. You know why he keeps his word? Because he never changes what he means. He doesn't say one thing in one generation and mean something ten generations later.

He always keeps his word because God is faithful to keep and to fulfill exactly what he says and he does not change. You see, unfaithfulness is always due to some character defect, some weakness in us.

But God has no weaknesses. He has no character defects. He has no imperfections. And he does not and he cannot change. And the reason that God cannot change is because change would always have to be in one of two directions.

He would either have to change to become better or he'd have to change to become worse. If he changes to become worse, he becomes less than God. If he changes to become better, it means that before he changed, he was something less than.

God.

So God, because of his very nature, cannot change. Because he is perfect in his knowledge, perfect in his wisdom, perfect in all of his attributes. Because those perfections are infinite and because those perfections are infinite and unchanging, therefore we would look at God and say, he is faithful.

So faithfulness is an essential character or quality of God because he cannot be anything other than faithful. Hebrews 13, 8 says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, describing his divine nature.

Malachi 3, 6, I the Lord do not change, therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. James 1, 17, every good thing is given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights in whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

His faithfulness is tied to his immutability. Because he does not change, his perfections make change and unfaithfulness absolutely impossible. Now with man, our unfaithfulness is always due to some lack in us.

You and I are creatures who are subject to change all the time. You are a different person right now than you were when you walked into this room.

You're different.

Cells in your body have died, other cells have come into existence since you walked into this room. You have learned things since coming into this room that you did not know before you walked into that room.

For instance, who was going to be at church today and where you were going to sit and maybe you even learned something hopefully today about Dory not being a clown fish. You might not have known that before you came into this room.

Now you know that. You're a different person now than you were when you walked into the room. And everything you have ever experienced is always changing and everything around us is always changing. And so when we are unfaithful in one thing, in a multitude of things, in big things or in small things, it is always due to some weakness or imperfection in us.

We might be unfaithful because of fear. Fear causes us to not go through with what it is that we promise. We make a promise to something and then something comes up and we think, man, I'm not sure I want to do that.

And so we fear and that causes us to be unfaithful or our desires change or we lose interest in something. Suddenly, I don't want that anymore. There are things that I wanted 20 years ago, I don't want those anymore.

Why?

My desires have changed. I've changed. So if I promised something to somebody 20 years ago and now it's time for me to fess up and to fulfill that, that could have changed because my desires changed or my interest changed or because I'm weak or I lack resources or I lack wisdom or maybe I lack the knowledge to know what it is that I should be promising or what it is that I should be intending to.

Do.

Those are all weaknesses. I lack wisdom. I make the wrong promise or I make the wrong promise about the wrong time or the wrong thing or I'm simply ignorant. I can't know the future. And so I promise something but then I'm unable to fulfill and that might be unfaithfulness and it is in a sense.

But all of those expressions of unfaithfulness, all of those causes of unfaithfulness are all weaknesses or defects or deficiencies in us. God has none of those weaknesses and He has none of those deficiencies.

All of His perfections are infinite and they are perfect and they are unchanging and therefore He is faithful. Since God suffers none of those things, none of these things can be true of God and therefore He cannot be anything but absolutely and perfectly faithful.

Therefore His promises cannot fail. Now what is God faithful to? What is God faithful to? If we describe a dog being faithful, what do we mean by that? My dog, the most faithful dog you've ever met. Now I don't have a dog but I'm speaking hypothetically.

My dog is the most faithful dog you'll ever meet. I just love him. He's faithful. What we mean by that is that every time I come home from work, he's right there by the door waiting for me when I walk through the door or he's always by my side or no matter what happens, that dog never leaves me.

He is obedient. He does what I ask him to do. He's a faithful dog. We describe a man who is faithful to his wife, we mean that he is faithful to her and that is he doesn't break his promises to her or do things that might hurt her or break his covenant to her.

He's faithful to some standard. What is God faithful to? We say that God is faithful. Scripture affirms that He is faithful but what is God faithful to? Not what is He faithful to do but what is He faithful to?

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not, Thy perfections they fail not. As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be. Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see.

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

That's wrong.

I'm glad we didn't sing that this morning. I mean I understand what the author is getting at but God is not faithful to you. You are not the standard to which God adheres in His faithfulness. What is God faithful to?

He's faithful to Himself. There is no higher being and there is no higher standard than God. He's not faithful to you. He's not faithful to me. Now as we experience God and as we see Him fulfill His promises it sure looks like what?

That God is being faithful to me because I'm experiencing His faithfulness. But when I experience God's faithfulness I'm experiencing nothing more than His faithfulness to do exactly what He has promised to do.

God will be faithful to the reprobate whom He cast into hell because He has promised to that person that if he will not repent and believe God will cast him into hell. And when God does that and destroys His enemies He will be expressing His faithfulness to do exactly what He has promised to do with that person.

And when God says to you, welcome into the joy of your master well done good and faithful servant come on in to the kingdom that I have prepared for you. When He does that for you He's not being faithful to you.

He's being faithful to do to you exactly what He promised to do. So that God is ultimately faithful not to us because we change and we're constantly in flux and constantly changing. But God is faithful to Himself and that is the God that you ought to want.

One who is faithful to His Word, faithful to His nature, faithful to His attributes that He cannot and He does not deny Himself. And there is no greater standard to which God could be faithful than to Himself.

So now back to the question, what then does all of this have to do with me holding fast? I understand that Scripture says that God is faithful. I understand what that means not that He's full of faith but that He is the one who is worthy of full faith.

I understand that God is not necessarily faithful to me though that's how I experience it but ultimately the standard to which God adheres and is faithful is His own nature, His own character, His own Word, His own being and since all of that is true how does that motivate me to hold fast and to do so without wavering, to hold fast my confession of hope?

How is that a motivation? Let me give you three implications of God's faithfulness. This is our outline today and don't panic because we will get through all three of these. So this is the three-point outline.

All of that was introductory work and now we're going into the three points. So here is what God is faithful to. God is faithful to accomplish first of all all that He has purposed. He is faithful to accomplish all that He has purposed.

Psalm 115 verse 3 says, our God is in the heavens and He does whatever He pleases. Psalm 135 verse 6, whatever the Lord pleases He does in heaven and earth and in all the deeps. Daniel 4 verse 35, all the inhabitants of the earth is counted as nothing.

He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and no one can say to Him, what have you done? Isaiah 46 verse 10, God declares the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things which have not been done saying, my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

What God purposes, He accomplishes. And because He is perfect and infinite in all of His perfections and because He knows everything and is all wise and He is all powerful, that means that whatever God desires to do, He has not only the wisdom but also the ability to accomplish it.

And so when God purposes to do something, He will accomplish what it is that He has purposed to do. So none of God's purposes can ever be frustrated. Nobody can ever ward off His purposes. No one can ever keep Him from fulfilling His purposes.

As I've said before in previous lessons, God does not try, He does what He intends to do. He accomplishes what He purposes to accomplish. So God never attempts to do anything and then fails to do it or fails to bring it to pass.

Everything He brings to pass is exactly what He has purposed to bring to pass. So friend, so Christian, if He has purposed your salvation, He will accomplish it. Is there anything, if you are in Jesus Christ, chosen by the Father from the foundation of the world, if you are in Jesus Christ and atoned for by His blood and regenerated by the Holy Spirit, then I ask you, is there anything in heaven or on earth, in the heights or the depths or the length or the breadth, is there any experience, any emotion, any devil, any demon, any purpose of man, any government, any persecution, anything at all, dreamed up in the wicked heart of men, that can keep God from fulfilling what He has purposed concerning you?

Isn't that what Paul says in Romans 8? Did you almost hear the language of Romans 8 working its way in there? Nothing shall separate us from the love of God, height nor depth, anything created, uncreated.

I'm sorry, anything created, heavens and on earth, spiritual beings, principalities, powers. Nothing can separate you from that. Why is that? Because whatever the Lord purposes, He does. If He's purposed your salvation, you'll be saved.

There's no way you can be lost because there is nothing to which God must say, well, I tried that, but I didn't have the power, I didn't have the wisdom, I didn't have the knowledge to bring that to pass.

If He has purposed it, He will accomplish it. This pertains to your salvation if you have come to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. If you repented of your sin and placed your faith in Jesus Christ and God has begun that good work in you, Paul says in Philippians 1, He will complete what He has begun in you all the way until the day of Christ Jesus.

There is nothing that can't happen that will thwart that or that will keep it from coming.

To pass.

Nothing. And so your salvation, if He has purposed it, it will happen. Unbeliever, be terrified right now because if God is intending to damn you, there is nothing you can do to avoid that damnation. Repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is why when He casts His unbelievers and His enemies into hell, it will be an expression of His faithfulness because He has promised to do this and He will not change on His promise. Get to the end of your life and you have not trusted Jesus Christ, God is not going to say, well, I really didn't give you an opportunity, so go ahead, come on in, heaven.

No.

He will damn you for your unbelief and it will be an expression of His justice, an expression of His faithfulness. Because God is faithful, He will accomplish what He has purposed and second, He will give what He has promised.

What is it that God has promised? Look at verse 23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for He who promised is faithful. The author here has in mind a promise that God has made and God's faithfulness to that promise and God's faithfulness to His Word and to His own nature requires Him to fulfill that promise.

What is the promise that the author has in mind? What are we to hold fast to? Our confession of what?

Hope.

What it is that we hope for and what we have placed our hope in, that confident expectation that awaits us, that is what it is that God has promised. To all those who are in Jesus Christ, He has promised eternal life, forgiveness of sins, adoption into His family, and inheritance with the saints, eternal joys, delights and pleasures in heaven forevermore, the kingdom, a paradise, a new creation, resurrection bodies, His own glory, everlasting life, His holiness, His righteousness, His joy, a reward for your love, your service, your sacrifice, your faithfulness, and a reward for your devotion and affection toward Him.

He has promised all of those things to you and because He has promised all of those things to you, you will receive it because He is faithful. So He has promised that to you. He must fulfill His promise.

He must accomplish what He has purposed. He must give what He has promised. This is actually the motivation that is held fast and held out to us in Hebrews chapter 6. And if you have a moment, just turn back there, Hebrews chapter 6.

I want you to see because these are parallel passages in a sense, Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10. Both of them are very near to the warning passages that people use to say you can lose your salvation. But I want you to notice how the unchangeableness of God, His immutability and His faithfulness are held out as the hope of the anchor that we have in Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 6 beginning at verse 17. Notice the similar language. Notice the language of unchangeableness, of holding fast, the hope that is set before us, the certainty, God being faithful. Notice the language.

Hebrews 6, 17. In the same way God desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

This hope we have is an anchor for the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Notice the language. Sure, steadfast, certain, immovable, unchangeableness, it is impossible for God to lie, therefore you are to take hold of the hope that is set before us. You have this hope as an anchor for the soul.

The author is describing here the hope that we have, this future certain expectation is set out before us and we are called and encouraged and exhorted to lay hold of that and to hold fast to that.

Why?

Because He who has promised that very thing, He cannot lie, He cannot change, and He who promised is faithful. So if God has held out a hope for us, with certainty that hope will come to pass. And because He is faithful, it is motivation for us if He has sworn that those who come to Him by faith in Christ, if He has sworn that those who hold fast rather than shrink back to destruction will receive the reward, then friends, that is motivation to hold fast because He will fulfill His promise.

Imagine that it were something different. Imagine that it were the opposite. Imagine for a moment that God were fickle and faithless and that He changed on a whim or on a dime, that His purposes would change and He might promise something and then never come through with it.

Imagine for a moment that that were true. What motivation could you possibly have for holding fast to your faith? Because you might sacrifice for your whole life. You might sacrifice and give up and be steadfast and immovable and without wavering and cling to Him, cling to that promise.

God made the promise and you might give up things during this life. You might sacrifice and serve Him. You might endure the hostility of scorning sinners who reproach Him and reproach you. You might suffer the loss of all things for the sake of knowing Christ, have everything taken away from you and finally suffer a martyr's death, then only to find out what?