Hold Fast the Confession of Hope - Hebrews 10:23

Kootenai Church

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Now, turn, if you will, to the book of Hebrews, to chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10, and when you've found your place, we're going to read from verse 19 through verse 25, and before we do, we'll have a word of prayer to ask the

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Lord's blessing upon our study. Let's bow our heads. Father, our prayer now is simple, and as we come to Your Word, we just pray that it would have its way in our hearts and our minds, and that You would sanctify us by Your truth.

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Give us understanding in Your Word, and we pray that we may see in the pages of Your Word the glory of Christ and the glory of what

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He has done for us. We pray that You would encourage our hearts together today, and that You would be pleased to bring the lost to faith in Christ, and encourage the hearts of those who are

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Yours to hold fast to Christ who holds fast to us. We ask this in His name. Amen.

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Hebrews 10, beginning of verse 19, read through the end of verse 25, and we're going to be looking specifically at verse 23 today.

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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

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He inaugurated for us through the veil that is His flesh, and since we have a great high 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.

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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.

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Our focus today is on this second exhortation in verse 23, and we've noticed that there are three exhortations in the passage, which this passage immediately precedes the warning passage beginning in verse 26, and there are three of them that all begin with a let us statement, verse 22, let us draw near, verse 23, let us hold fast, and verse 24, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.

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And those three exhortations really are birthed out of or come out of the theological truth that has preceded this, which is summed up in verses 19 and 20, since we have bold access and confident access to the throne of God, and since we have a great priest over the household of God, then we are to do these three things.

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We are to draw near, we are to hold fast, and we are to encourage one another to do the exact same thing. So today we are looking at this second exhortation, the one in verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful.

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Now this is, this exhortation to hold fast, this holding fast is the predominant theme through the rest of the epistle.

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You remember some weeks ago when I kind of gave you an overview of what is to come beginning at verse 19 through the end of the book of Hebrews, that we saw this theme come up over and over again.

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Continue on, hold fast, be faithful, stand firm in your faith. In the midst of an opposing world and a hostile world, you and I are to cling fast and hold fast to Jesus Christ and to the truth that is given to us in Scripture, the truth of the gospel.

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That's the exhortation that is mostly the concern of the author for the rest of the book. That's really what he's going to develop.

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Now he states it here in verse 23 almost as if to introduce us that this is going to be the predominant theme through the rest of the epistle.

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So keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that this exhortation is necessary in good times and in bad, in every era of Christian history, in every church, in every period of the church age, in all circumstances, all over the globe, this exhortation is necessary to hold fast to the confident hope that we have and to do so without wavering.

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In times of plenty and prosperity, in times of persecution and suffering, we need to be reminded to hold fast.

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And here's why. In the good times, the good times we need to be encouraged to hold fast because good times lure us away from our convictions and our commitments.

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Good times, times of ease, times of plenty, times of prosperity, that creates indifference and we are lured away after the promise of other good things.

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When we have it too easy, we're not fighting a fight for the faith, we're not fighting the fight for our lives, we're not suffering or we're not dealing with affliction.

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And even if we're not talking about persecution but just the suffering of a disease or the suffering of a financial suffering or the suffering of just bad times, when we're not dealing with those things during the good times when everything is as we might want it to be and we think that the blessing of God rests upon us, we have everything that we need, these are good times, these are enjoyable times, these are comfortable times, we are lured away from our convictions during those times because we have nothing to fight for and so we're really not sure even if we have anything that's worth fighting for.

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And the promise of more good times kind of lures us away. We become apathetic, we become indifferent, and we start to hold our convictions really loosely.

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And then the moment that there is the threat or the possibility that some of those good times might be taken away from us, what do we do?

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We're tempted to compromise in order to keep the good times good. In order to keep the good things that we enjoy in the good times, we're tempted to compromise with the spirit of the age or whatever pressure there is from outside, whatever is moving and changing in some direction other than it being good and pleasant for us, we're tempted to compromise.

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With no battles to fight, we're just really not even sure what we're holding on to. So in the good times, we need to be encouraged, hold fast to the confident hope that you have in Jesus Christ.

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During bad times, well during the bad times, we're lured away from our convictions by the promise of good times.

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Good times lure us away with the promise of keeping those good times. Bad times lure us away with the promise that if we could just make the affliction stop, if we could just make the persecution stop, if we could just make the bad things stop happening, then we would have good times again.

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And so then you're tempted to compromise for a whole other reason, and that's to get out from underneath of the bad times. So in bad times and in good times, we are tempted to turn in our convictions and to compromise with the spirit of the age.

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So in bad times, while we're fighting the battle, then we need to be reminded that what we're fighting for is actually worth holding on to.

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In the good times, we need to be reminded that we have something to fight for, even if at the moment, we're not necessarily called to fight it.

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So good times create an internal allurement to compromise, and bad times create an external pressure to compromise.

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So whether it is good times or bad times, we need to be reminded that we are to, in the words of verse 23, hold fast the confession of our hope.

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In every age, at all times, in times of prosperity and in times of persecution, in times of ease and times of difficulty, every

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Christian needs to be reminded there is something worth fighting for, there is something worth holding on to, and we are encouraged and commanded to hold fast to it and to not give it up.

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Notice that verse 23 has for us an exhortation, an explanation, and a motivation.

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The exhortation is in that phrase, hold fast the confession of our hope. That is what we are exhorted to do. That is the command to us.

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Hold fast the confession of your hope. The explanation is how it is that we are to do that. We are to do that without wavering, and the motivation behind all of that is that He who promised is faithful.

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The exhortation, we're to hold fast our conviction, our confidence, our confession of our hope. We're to hold that fast.

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That's the command. The motivation for that is because He who called us is faithful, and the explanation of how it is that we are to do that, we are to do this without wavering.

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So let's look at those three things. First, the exhortation. This is the third time that the idea of holding fast is mentioned in Hebrews.

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This is something that is not just the main theme of the book of Hebrews from this point forward all the way to the end of this epistle.

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This is something that the author has been alluding to as he has worked his way through this epistle. Remember the previous warning passages that warned us of the danger of apostasy and falling away?

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Those passages were usually sandwiched between these exhortations to hold fast to something. Hebrews 3, verse 6, but 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.

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Notice the reference there to holding fast and hope in chapters 3, verse 6. Hebrews 3, verse 14, for we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.

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Hebrews 4, verse 14, therefore since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the

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Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. The author has been building up to this. He knows that he is writing to a group of people who because of external pressures, bad times on the horizon, some of them had even suffered the seizure of their own property and were even begin to experience soft persecution with the promise of hard persecution to follow.

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The author knew that that was the condition of his readers. And so he is in light of that, he begins the epistle with these exhortations to hold fast.

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Hold fast to your confidence. Hold fast the beginning of your assurance. Hold fast your confession. Don't let go.

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Don't let go of it. And of course all the way through the epistle he has been reminding them that someone holds fast to you, right?

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It's not that your salvation depends on your ability to hold fast. If it did, how many of you would be saved?

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Probably all of you in good times because then holding fast is easy. But how many of us would remain saved during bad times if our salvation depended upon our ability to hold fast to Him, right?

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So the author has been doing these two things, encouraging his readers to hold fast their confession of hope and encouraging them by reminding them that somebody else is really holding fast to them.

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He who promised is faithful. God cannot lie. We have an anchor for the soul, one that has gone beyond the veil.

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He is a forerunner for us. He will not lose us. He will not let us go. He is confident of that. We saw that in chapter 6.

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So these two things go together. We hold fast to Him and He holds fast to us. These two things go together.

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We are preserved by Him and protected by Him and we must persevere all the way to the end.

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Both of those things are true. So as I'm talking today about holding fast, I do not want you to think that I am compromising with my doctrine of the perseverance of the saints because I'm describing here the human side today of this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.

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We are going to look at the divine side also in verse 23 that He who promised is faithful because both of these things go together.

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You hold fast and don't worry, He is faithful and He will not lose you. Both of those things are true. So let's talk about what it means to hold fast.

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A definition first. To hold fast means to hold on to. It means to possess or to control or to retain. The word that is translated here into our

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English version, hold fast the confession of your hope, that word means to continue in something. And here it is continuing in belief or hope or faith.

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It is used in Scripture. It's actually used also of restraining something, holding something back that might want to unleash itself.

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Like it's used of that of the restrainer who restrains in 2 Thessalonians. It's used in that way. It's the same word.

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It's used in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 2 of holding fast to the word that is preached. It's used in 1

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Thessalonians 5, 21 of holding fast to that which is good. It's used in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 2 to hold fast to the apostolic traditions, not traditions outside of Scripture that were handed down, but there it means the traditional teaching and practices of the apostles that are communicated through divine revelation, to hold fast to those traditions.

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And what are we to hold fast to? Verse 23, let us hold fast the confession. And that word is the Greek word homologia, homologia, homo meaning same, logia from the word lego which means to speak.

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I don't know what that has to do with the toy. I don't even know if the people who designed the toys had any idea what the Greek word for lego meant.

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But the word lego means to speak or to say something, to tell it or to say it. That word lego comes from a family of Greek words like logos which means word and logia which means to speak those things.

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It's kind of a group of words that has the idea of communicating something or referring to that which is or has been communicated.

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So a confession, the word confession does a very good job of translating exactly the sense of what is described here.

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Con in our English word means with, fess means to speak or to fess up, right?

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You're going to fess up, so you're going to confess, you're going to agree or speak up to exactly what it is that they're asking you to confess or agree with them about.

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So when we talk about a confession here, we're talking about not something that we profess but something that is a common saying or a common affirmation.

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The word confession literally means to say the same as others or to agree with, to be in assent to something or to give admission to something.

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Now there's a translation issue here in this phrase with the King James version of the Bible which I need to kind of correct here a little bit.

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There's two actually transmission issues if you have a King James translation. One of them is the word, the

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King James uses the word profess instead of confess and it also translates the word as faith instead of hope.

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And so the King James translates the phrase, let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. You say is that really an important issue?

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It is because the word profession deals with a public declaration or a claim to believe something and though it might be a somewhat adequate translation, it is not an accurate translation because what is emphasized here in the passage is not our act of confessing something, it is what it is that we confess.

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In other words, it is the body of truth that is in view. It is that which is confessed which we say together.

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So we might talk about our common confession and by that we mean not that we're saying something together at the same time, but it is that which we all agree to.

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It's the objective body of doctrine which we are describing here, not the act of professing belief in that objective body of doctrine.

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So what is being described here is the body of truth that we confess together. What we hold to be true together is what we are to hold fast to, not just what we profess.

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So the word here refers to that which is believed and not to the act of simply professing belief in that.

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The objective content, what is believed, not just, yeah, I believe that. It's not a profession of faith that we are to hold fast to.

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We are not to hold fast to our mere profession of faith. How many people have made professions of faith that have never been saved?

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I baptized them and they've come into this church and been baptized and then left this church.

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In the course of human history, in the course of church history, there have been tens of thousands, millions of people who have made professions of faith in Jesus Christ who were not actually saved.

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We are not commanded to hold fast to a mere profession of belief in something or a profession of faith in those things.

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That is not what we are to hold fast to. A profession is something that can change with the wind. A profession is something subjective.

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Instead, we are to hold fast to something which we all confess together, something that we all agree together to be true.

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It is something objective. It is something outside of us. So that's the first translation issue. The second is with the word hope.

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We are to, in the words of verse 23, hold fast the confession of our hope. The King James translates it, hold fast your profession of faith, and it translates the word faith instead of hope.

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Now, it is a mystery to me and most commentaries that I've read why the translators decided to translate the word faith instead of hope because the word that is used is not the word for faith.

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It is the word for hope. So, one of two things happened. Either the King James translators were translating some variant in the text that we are unaware of that existed or, and we don't know, it's been lost to history, or the

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King James translators, as we talked about last week, believed that the phrase at the end of verse 22, which described the washing of water, your bodies with the water, pure water, was a reference to baptism, in which case they would view verse 23 as a command to hold fast your profession of faith, which was evidenced in your baptism.

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So, it's possible that that affected their, the translation of verse 22 and their understanding of that being baptism would have affected their translation of verse 23.

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However it is or whyever it is that they translated that, it is not the best translation. Just be aware of that. I'm not here to bash the

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King James. It's a good translation as far as it goes. I don't have an axe to grind. That's not the point of this.

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It's just to point out a difference of translation. We are called to confess, that is, we're to hold, sorry, hold fast to that objective body of doctrine that we together adhere to and believe.

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And it is that confession of our hope, not our faith, that we are to hold fast to.

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In other words, the author is trying to get us to look outside of us. It's something that is objectively true, not something that is subjectively done or subjectively felt.

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Hope you understand the difference between what is objectively true and what is subjectively felt or done. Here's the difference between what is objectively true and subjectively felt.

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What is objectively true is something that would be true whether or not you ever existed. Gravity is an objective reality.

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If you had never been born and had never felt gravity, gravity would still exist. It would still be a thing.

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It would still be a law of the universe. That which is true is true regardless of if I have ever lived or believed it or not.

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Even if nobody believed the Christian message in the Christian gospel, it would still be true. If only one person believed the

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Christian message in the Christian gospel, it would still be true because it is objectively true and its truth does not depend upon how subjects, us, we, respond to it or whether or not we embrace it.

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So it is objectively, something that is objectively true. And we are to hold fast the confession of our hope.

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Let's define hope for a moment because this is something that is often misunderstood, the word hope. Let me tell you what hope does not mean.

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Hope is not a reference to a feeling. At least hope in this context is not a reference to a feeling.

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This is not something that we feel. You understand what it means to feel hope? Right? I don't know if it's an emotion or a sentiment or a sentimentality, but that's not what's being described here.

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What's being described here is not a sentiment. It is not something we think about something. It's not how we feel about something.

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It's not a feeling at all. Sometimes you would even say, I feel hopeful about this. When you say you feel hopeful about something, what are you describing?

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You're saying that inside of you, you feel a hope about something. And if you're full of that hope, you're hopeful.

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When you say I'm hopeful, it means that I'm full of this feeling of hope. We're not talking about a feeling of hope in the context.

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Second, we're not talking about an activity that we do, like we hope for something. Like you might say,

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I hope this sermon is shorter than most, or I hope that Jim's going to get all the way through this verse before we're done here because I don't know if I can endure another

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Sunday on this verse. That is something that you're doing. It's an activity that you're engaged in.

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You're having a feeling or you're hoping that this is the case. That's not what's being described here. It's also not something that is uncertain, something you think will happen or something that you want to happen, but you're not sure if it will.

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Like when you were on your way to church today and your spouse said to you, do you think Jim will get all the way through the verse today?

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And you said, well, that's my hope anyway. Right? Something you're uncertain of, but you're kind of hoping is going to happen.

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So it's not a feeling. It's not something we do, and it's not something that we are uncertain of, and we're just going to wait and see how it all cashes out.

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When Scripture uses the word hope, we could translate it, your expectation, because that's what it is describing.

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I love the translation of the phrase, our confident expectation, because that is what the word hope describes.

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Something that is yet future, something that is our hope, something in which there is not a hint of uncertainty whatsoever.

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So when Scripture describes the hope that we have, which is sure and steadfast, that hope, which is an anchor for our soul that has entered within the veil, when

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Scripture describes the hope of the resurrection or the hope of eternal life or the hope of the age to come, it is not describing something that is in any way uncertain.

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There is not a hint of uncertainty about it whatsoever. It is describing something that is yet future, an objective thing that is true, and listen, it's absolutely true.

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It is unchanging, and it is something that you can fix your hope or expectation on because it is absolutely certain.

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That is what Scripture describes by the word hope. So when it says that we are to hold fast the confession of our hope, he is talking about an objective body of truth that is outside of us, something upon which we have set our gaze with absolute confident expectation that these things will happen.

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And that these things are certain, and that our heart clings to that, and the author says, do not let go of that confident hope.

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This confession that you hold to be true, all of you together, this confident confession in the gospel and the truths thereof, fix your hope on that, fix your eyes on that, and do not let go of it because that is what is certain.

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So when he says, hold fast your hope, he is not saying, hey, keep that warm feeling alive inside of you.

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Just that, you know, that hopeful feeling, I just got, it's just feelings. And that thing which you kind of think your hope is going to happen, it might happen, it might not, just kind of keep the hope alive.

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That's not what he's describing. He's describing something that would be true even if you never existed.

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It's objective, it's outside of you, it is certain, it will happen. It is that body of content and that which we confess that is certain, that is true, that we are to hold fast to.

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This is how the word hope is used in Hebrews. I'm going to give you a few references of what we've already covered, actually, in previous passages.

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I'll just read the verses to you. Hebrews 3, 6, Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and boast of our hope firm until the end.

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Hebrews 6, 11, we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope to the end.

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Does that word assurance of hope, does that phrase sound like anything uncertain to you? Hold fast the firm assurance of hope all the way to the end.

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Hebrews 6, 18, 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 that is set before us.

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Hebrews 7, 19, for the law made nothing perfect. And on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope through which we draw near to God.

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Notice the reference in Hebrews 7 of the better hope and drawing near to God. These two things are connected in Hebrews 7 just like they're connected here in Hebrews 10, verse 22 and 23.

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We are to draw near to God and we are to hold fast to that hope. Back in chapter 7, the author says we have a better hope and it's through that hope that we draw near to God.

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This idea of having something objective that is true that we cling to and by which and because of which we draw nigh unto

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God, that is something that's all the way, woven all the way through this epistle. So hope as it's used in Hebrews and hope as it's used in the rest of Scripture is something that is certain, it is sure, it is steadfast, it is immovable.

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It will happen. It must happen. It is something objectively true outside of us. It's not a feeling.

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It's not an uncertainty. And it is something that rests, it is a future certainty that rests upon certain historical realities.

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For instance, when we talk about the future hope and the word hope is used in terms of the resurrection of the just which is to come.

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That was called the hope of Israel by Paul in the book of Acts. There is a resurrection of the just that is to come, a resurrection of the unjust.

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There are certain future events that will and must unfold and we can refer to those things as our hope.

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So our future hope is the fact that our sins are forgiven and we will receive because of that eternal glory, that we are adopted into God's family and we are seated with Christ in heavenly places, that what belongs to the

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Son belongs to us by virtue of the fact that we are in Him. So we share glory and we share our inheritance with the saints in Christ, that we are co -heirs with Jesus Christ, so the kingdom belongs to us.

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That is our hope. It is our hope that there will be a judgment of this world, a resurrection of the unjust and a resurrection of the just and that then there will be a recreation of this heavens and this earth and we who are in Jesus Christ by virtue of repentance and faith in Him, we will dwell with Him, we will dwell in union with Him in a new heavens and a new earth in resurrected bodies for all of eternity, basking in and enjoying the pleasures and the glories of the age to come and of our

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Triune God everlastingly. That is the hope. None of that is uncertain. None of it is uncertain.

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The kingdom is ours. The inheritance is ours. It all belongs to us. We don't possess it all now literally physically in reality, but it all belongs to us and we will possess it all and there will be a resurrection of the just and the unjust and the unrighteous will perish and the righteous will go into everlasting glory.

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That, Christian, is your hope and you know why that is your hope? Because certain historical things happen, things that are objectively true outside of you even if you had never been born.

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Those historically objective things are the fact that God sent His Son into this world and He lived a perfect life and He died in the place of sinners so that any and all who repent of their sins and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ can have eternal life, be adopted into His family, have their sins forgiven, be imputed the righteousness of Jesus Christ and welcomed into heaven with God's open arms at the end of their lives.

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Those historical things happen. Those are objective truths. Those historical realities make your future hope absolutely certain.

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So we have a future hope because we look back upon something that we commonly confess together and this is all tied together.

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All of that which we confess gives us the hope that we have and we are to hold fast to that without letting go.

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There are two audiences in view in the book of Hebrews, two audiences. I talked about this back with the reference to drawing near.

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There is in the mind of the author of Hebrews both the unbeliever who is sitting in the audience or reading his words.

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He has them in view as he has encouraged them time and again to lay hold of the hope that they have in Jesus Christ, to lay fast to Him.

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He has encouraged them to turn away from sin, to not apostatize. He knows he has unbelievers who are listening to him, people in that camp who are wavering back and forth and considering the claims of Christ.

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And he also knows that he has believers in his audience that are listening to him, believers who were looking at the horrible times to come, who had been suffering persecution, saw persecution as well as some hard persecution that he refers to later on in the book.

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And some of those believers were wavering. They were shaken by the adversity. They needed a little bit of encouragement to not waver and to not doubt or to be shaken which is why he says in verse 23 that we are to hold this confession of hope without wavering.

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There were some there who were wavering in their belief and they needed to get spines of steel and be encouraged to hold fast and to hold true to the truth, the subjective body of truth he's been describing.

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So he has in mind both unbelievers and believers. So I want to apply this text and what we're talking about here both to the unbeliever and to the believer.

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Now I ask you, unbeliever, if you are here and you think that you are in Jesus Christ or you're not certain if you're in Jesus Christ and you have never repented of your sin and trusted

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Christ for salvation, I ask you this. What would keep you from doing that and possessing and enjoying so beautiful and so glorious a hope as what we have in Jesus Christ?

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What would keep you from that? Here's the evangelistic appeal. I beg of you not to give intellectual assent to the things that I've been saying and not to simply say, yeah,

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I agree. I think Jesus did come into this world. I think He claimed to be the Son of God. I think He even died and I think it's probably true that He rose from the dead.

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And not to give intellectual assent to what you have been raised to believe in your Christian home or what your grandparents have taught you, but to honestly ask yourself, have you been born again?

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Have you repented of your sin and trusted Christ for salvation? Do you know that if you were to die today that you would have eternal life and that you would go into the presence of God?

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Or are you still living in rebellion to Him? Here is the evangelistic appeal. This is your only hope,

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Jesus Christ and Him crucified and His resurrection. If you are outside of Jesus Christ, you have no hope for eternal life.

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There remains no more sacrifice for sin. There is no place to which you can turn. There is no other sacrifice and no other payment for sin which can atone for your sin and give you eternal life.

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You must have Christ or you will perish. And you must trust Christ as if not trusting

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Him, you will perish because without Him, you will. And so you must have Christ and you must trust Him and you must trust

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Him alone for eternal life or you will perish everlastingly. There is held for you in Scripture a hope, an objective truth, an objective future certainty that is based upon historical facts.

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And if you reject that, you reject it at the peril of your own soul. Now to the Christian, this is the other part of his audience, to the

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Christian, there is encouragement here that what you have confessed, you have confessed with millions of others. See, when

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I talk about the confession that we have which is the common thing that we all say with the body of doctrine that we all adhere to, I can look around this congregation, there are people here in this congregation that we would disagree on a lot of tertiary, secondary issues, right?

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Whether we should baptize infants or not, you might have a different opinion on that. Whether the millennium is going to actually happen or not, you might have a different opinion on that.

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Whether you're a non -millennialist or post -millennialist or pre -millennialist, you might be post -trib or mid -trib or pre -trib, you might be any of those things.

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You might be a little bit more covenant, I'm a little bit more dispensational, there are all kinds of things that we disagree with. But there is something that if you are in Jesus Christ, all of us affirm together.

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All of us give assent to the authority of Scripture and to the doctrine of the Trinity that our

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God exists, three persons in one God. And to the deity of Christ and in His sacrificial death on the cross and His virgin birth and His death for sinners and His bodily physical resurrection from the dead on the third day and His ascension to the right hand of the

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Father and His soon and coming return. All of those things we hold together. And we hold those things together in spite of tertiary differences and disagreements.

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We hold those things together with Christians, millions of them from all of the church age, from all over the planet and every tongue and tribe and kindred on the face of the planet for the last 2 ,000 years, we commonly confess these truths.

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If you don't confess these truths, then you're outside of Christ and you have no part and no share in that eternal hope.

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But for those of us who are in Christ, we gladly confess these things with millions of others and be encouraged,

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Christian, that there are millions of other Christians who have lived around this world, all over this world in every era of church history, and they have all held to this common confession in the face of hostility and suffering that you cannot imagine and that hopefully most of us in this room will never face or experience.

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Whatever comes our way, we're only one of countless millions of our brothers and sisters who have held fast to Him in the face of that hostility.

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We share when we hold fast that confession, we share the very same confession that the original readers of the book of Hebrews would have shared.

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That's amazing to me. And when we hold fast, we're holding fast to the same thing that they held fast to.

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And we receive the same reward that they receive. We receive the same glory that they receive, and we'll share it together.

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We hold fast to a confession that has been confessed by millions of others who have also trusted in Christ.

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This common confession is the hope for our soul. I'm going to read to you again. Hebrews chapter 6, we read this earlier.

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In the same way, God is desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose.

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Listen to the certainty of these words. The unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath so that by two unchangeable things,

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God's nature and God's oath, 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.

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This hope we have as 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 according to the order of Melchizedek.

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Do you hear that language? A hope sure and steadfast, an anchor for the soul.

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These truths that God sent His Son to die for sinners, to justify the ungodly and to bring them to heaven, to worship and glorify

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Him forever, to enjoy His presence forever so that He could lavish on us, on them, on all who are

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His, His delights, His pleasures, His glory forever and ever, that is what we are confessing.

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That is what we are holding to. That is the hope that is set before us. So, Christian, don't be shaken by this. If you have not yet, you must resolve in your heart to never compromise the truth, never compromise with the lives of the world, the spirit of the age.

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We're not holding fast to that which is fashionable. We're not holding fast to that which is popular.

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We're not holding fast to whichever fad is rushing through the church currently. We're not holding fast to whatever the world says is good or safe or glorious or true.

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We live in an age in which there is no such thing as truth in the minds of everybody, nearly everybody outside of those walls who does not hold to our confession.

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They have denied absolute truth. This is why they think there are 57 genders. This is why they are so confused in what they even think is true, what they think is true one day or what they affirm is true one day.

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They will deny the next and then they will affirm it again the next day. There is no such thing as objective truth out there.

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Don't compromise with that. Don't even think that for the sake of a pot of porridge that you would be willing to sell your birthright for that nonsense.

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We are not to hold fast to what is fashionable. We are not to hold fast to what the world says. We are to hold fast to our confession of our hope.

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And the strength to do so comes from Christ. The strength to do so comes from Christ. And we're going to talk more of this next week.

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The resolve, the strength, and our holding onto Him is really Him holding onto us. So yes, we are encouraged to hold fast, but verse 23, he who promised is faithful.

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Perseverance in the things of the faith, perseverance in the truth is the mark of a believer. 1

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John 2 .19 says, some go out from us because they were never of us. If they were of us, they would remain with us.

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But the fact that they leave us, the fact that they depart is evidence that they were never of us to begin with.

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As much as they put on airs, as much as they give verbal profession to those things which we confess and hold to, as much as they might do that, the fact that they leave is evidence that they were never of us to begin with.

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You are able to hold fast to Him because He holds fast to you. And your holding fast to Him does not save you.

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It is not the cause of your salvation. It is the fruit of your salvation. So we hold fast in the face of chaos.

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We are increasingly hated. The world is increasingly going crazy. Things are getting stupider and stupider with every sunrise.

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If you have not noticed that, you are not alert or awake or breathing or have two brain cells to rub together.

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It is obvious to all of us that the entire world has lost its mind. And they're getting more and more hostile to those of us who believe that there is an absolute truth and His name is

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Jesus Christ. And His word reveals that truth. In the face of that hostile world, you and I are commanded to hold fast because He who promised is faithful.

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Hold fast to your confession of your hope. In the midst of a world that is awash in lies everywhere, hold fast to your faith.

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That's the exhortation. Not to what is fashionable, not to what the world says is reasonable, and not to the spirit of the age.

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We do not bow to any of that. You either hold fast to your confession of hope firm into the end or you will abandon it and demonstrate once and for all to all who are watching that you do not belong to Jesus Christ and you never did.

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This is the good thing about persecution. Because it reveals who the goats are.

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Reveals who the sheep are. It sorts out very quickly the difference between the wheat and the tares. And those who are willing to compromise with the spirit of the age and embrace every lie belched up from the pit of hell, demonstrate that they belong to the one who will spend his eternity in the pit of hell.

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Not you and I. Not by holding fast our confession of hope firm into the end. By that we demonstrate that we belong to Him and He belongs to us.

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And we hold fast to Him because He holds fast to us. Now that's the exhortation.

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To hold fast to the confession of our hope. Next we'd have to move on to the explanation. We're to do so without wavering and then the motivation that He who promised is faithful and we will do that next week.

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So those of you who were hoping that we would get through this whole verse today, your hope was ill -founded. It was anything but certain.

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But Lord willing, with most certainty, we'll be back here next week. I'll close with something that Spurgeon said on this passage.

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I think it's encouraging. Spurgeon said, Hope in Christ and in His coming and in the victory of the truth.

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If the storms lower, believe that there is fair weather yet ahead. And if the night darkens into a sevenfold blackness, believe that the morning comes despite the darkening glooms.

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Do you have faith and trust in Him who lives and was dead and is alive forevermore? Let your hope begin to hear the hallelujahs which proclaim the reign of the

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Lord God, the omnipotent, for reign He must and the victory shall be unto

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Him and to His truth. Hold fast your faith, hold fast your hope. Let's bow our heads.

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Father, give us strength to do this very thing, to hold fast our faith and to hold fast our hope. And by being obedient to that command and to that exhortation, may we show to a dying and watching world that we belong to You and that our hope is not in this world at all, but in the world that is to come.

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May we hasten the day when we see Jesus Christ rule and reign in this world.

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And may we hasten to see, may you hasten that we may see the day when righteousness is done and Your truth and Your word and Your people and Your glory are all vindicated everlastingly.