Hold Fast the Confession of Hope Part 2 – Hebrews 10:23

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Apostasy Described Part 3 (Hebrews 10:28-29)

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Let's bow together before we begin. Our Father, we pray that today

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You would encourage our hearts in and through Your Word by the power of Your Spirit. We have sung out our hearts to You in worship and praise to You, our great

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God, who has called us to hold fast to You and You who have ordained our holding fast.

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You are the one who keeps us, You are the one who preserves us, You are the one who has ordained all of our steps, and so we can look to You and ask that You would strengthen our hearts through Your Word and grant us together a love and a fellowship one with another, that You may be honored through our obedience to Your Word and that You would by Your Word accomplish that which

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You have intended. Strengthen our hearts and give us courage and give us that gracious ability to hold fast to Christ and the confession of our hope that even in times of difficulty and trial that You would be glorified and honored through the obedience and the faithfulness of Your people.

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Strengthen us to that end, we pray, and guide our understanding and interpretation and our application of Your Word today, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

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We turn now please to Hebrews chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10, we're going to read together beginning at verse 19, and as you're reading along with me,

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I'm going to briefly offer a couple of comments to sort of set the stage for us when we're going to be getting into verse 23.

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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

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He inaugurated for us through the veil that is His flesh, since we have that confidence and since we have a great priest over the house of God, therefore, verse 22, we are to do these things, 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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And we are, verse 23, to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

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And in verse 24, 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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Since we have confidence to enter the holy place, since we have a great high priest over the house of God, we are to draw near, we are to hold fast, and we are to encourage others to do the same or encourage others to love and to good deeds, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.

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This is the passage that we're looking at today, looking mostly at verse 23. We live in a world that is constantly pressuring us to compromise.

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I don't know if you've noticed it or not, I don't know if you've felt the pressure or at least have been observing other people who are certainly feeling the pressure to compromise, but the world says to us that the truth claims of Scripture are narrow -minded and bigoted and too exclusive.

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The truth claims of Scripture are offensive, they are passe, they are archaic and belong more to a bronze age and to an unenlightened people.

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That's not fit for us in 21st century America and the western world. We're too progressive for those truth claims.

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And the moral standards of Scripture, well, the moral standards are just, they're bigoted, they're intolerant, they're narrow -minded, hateful, oppressive, misogynistic, sexist, homophobic, and the list goes on.

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And the exclusive gospel claims, the claim that if you do not belong to Jesus Christ by virtue of repentance and faith in Him, then you will perish everlastingly for your sin and in your sin, and that you will suffer the wrath of God for all of eternity, that is just, man, how narrow -minded that is, how uninclusive that is, how exclusive that is.

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How can you believe such unscientific nonsense and the history of the Bible? I mean, really, people, to affirm the miracles of the

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Bible or that the world was created, the entire universe was created in six literal 24 -hour days, to affirm, as you and I do, that the miracles of the

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Old Testament actually happened, that a nation walked through the Red Sea on dry land, that the

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Lord executed ten judgments on the nation of Egypt, that He made the sun stand still, that He made the sundial go back.

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To believe, as you and I do, that Jesus performed miracles and healed the sick and raised the dead and that then

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He Himself raised Himself from the dead, that, what type of ignorant, mythological, bigoted, unenlightened, and unscientific people are you?

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Have you felt this? Have you heard this? This is the world, and the motto of the world, the battle cry, is that you need to go along in order to get along.

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And you need to, if you're, you need to stop being so rigid and so uptight and so legalistic and so bigoted and so judgmental and so narrow -minded, how are you ever going to get along with the rest of the world if you believe the things that you do and you affirm the things that you do?

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It is probably best for you, Christian, if you keep your own personal, religious, archaic,

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Bronze Age convictions to yourself in your prayer closet, inside of your house, and keep them away from everybody else.

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Don't bring them out into the public square. Don't preach them openly. Don't put them on YouTube. Don't write about them.

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Don't publish books about them. Just keep them to yourself. Keep your own religious convictions to yourself and don't say anything about it beyond the walls of this church if you want to get along with the rest of the world.

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That is the world's battle cry. You, Christian, are on the wrong side of history. Have you heard that? That has to be one of the most ignorant, stupid, and self -contradictory phrases ever dreamed up in the darkened heart of man and his unenlightened and darkened mind that you could ever hear.

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The wrong side of history. You know how ignorant that statement is to claim that somebody is on the wrong side of history? You have to know something before you can make that claim, don't you?

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You have to know what? What is the right side of history? You can't determine what the wrong side of history is unless you know what the right side of history is, and you cannot know what the right side of history is unless you have some objective standard of right and wrong to judge what is right and what is wrong.

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What if history is going off a dark cliff into a thousand years of darkness? Then wouldn't being on the wrong side of history make you on the right side of history?

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Wouldn't being on the wrong side of history be the right thing to be? And in order to know if you are on the wrong side of history, you'd have to know where history is going, and you'd have to know what the purpose of history is.

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And, of course, you can't know any of those things unless you believe that bronze -aged, unenlightened, unscientific book that's sitting in your lap.

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You'd have to believe that in order to even know what the right side of history is. The pressure has increased in our age, and it is continuing to do so, and it is almost becoming palpable.

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I don't know if you've noticed that. It almost seems like it's been ramped up since the beginning of November somewhere.

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Somewhere last year, around the beginning of November, it seems like the pressure has increased, and it is getting more and more.

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It's becoming tense. You can almost cut this with a knife in our own culture now, as people are being canceled.

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People are being almost unpersoned in our contemporary culture, if you know that reference, almost being unpersoned for believing some of the things that we do.

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I would suggest to you that it is only going to get worse, and if that is true, then the reminder that we have, the command that we have in verse 23 is very timely.

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I didn't pluck this out of the sky. If you're just joining us, we've been building up to this for,

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I don't know how many years we've been in Hebrews, but it's been a number. So this is just the next phrase that we're looking at in verse 23.

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I didn't cherry -pick this passage at all. This is just where we're at. Verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for He who promised is faithful.

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Now, last week we looked at the exhortation in that sentence, let us hold fast the confession of our hope, and we saved the explanation of that, that we are to do this without wavering, and the motivation for that, that He who promised is faithful, we saved that for today.

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This let us hold fast the confession of our hope is the second of three let us exhortations that we've identified in this passage.

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Let us draw near, let us hold fast, and let us encourage one another to love and good deeds, that is to do the same thing.

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As we gather together, there's a corporate element to this, there's a personal element to these commands.

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And we are to do this in light of the fact that we have a great high priest over the house of God, and in light of the fact that you and I now have confident and unfettered and open access to the throne room of God, something never enjoyed under the old covenant.

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And because those things are true, because we have been given such a great gift, you and I are to draw near, and you and I are to hold fast to that which we draw near to, and that which we draw nearby.

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And then we are to encourage others to do the same. So what does it mean to hold fast the confession of our hope? And in case you weren't here last week,

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I'll just review this for you for a moment. Holding fast the confession of our hope, our confession is not the act of professing something, it's not something we do in baptism, it's not something that we do publicly, it's not what we write, it's not what we say, it's not a mere profession.

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The confession is something objective, outside of us, it is that body of truth, that doctrine of the gospel which has been handed down to us.

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We might say it is the faith once for all delivered to the saints, it is that objective body of truth that is true, whether or not you and I believe it, whether or not you and I ever existed.

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Because it doesn't depend upon our response to it, it doesn't depend upon our subjective embrace of it, it is simply that which is true.

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And that confession, that body of truth, that doctrine of truth that he has explained all the way through the book of Hebrews, that you and I have a great high priest over the house of God who has given us this access to God, he has done so by his once and for all death by which he has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself and perfected forever those who are sanctified, those who are his.

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He has perfected them by his death, he has purchased them by his death, and because he has done that, you and I have confident access to him.

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That is the objective body of truth that you and I are to hold fast to. That objective body of truth, that confession, is our confession of hope.

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The hope that we have is not a feeling, it's not an emotion, it's not our response to it, the hope that we have is an objective reality, it is a confident expectation that we have, an assurance, a confidence that we have because these things are true.

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Because these things are true, you and I have hope not only in this life but also for the life to come. We have an eschatological hope of a kingdom and an inheritance and a reward and forgiveness and life eternal with God in heaven because of what

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Christ has done. That is our hope. And you and I are to cling to that and to hold fast to that.

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And now the author answers the question, how are we to do this? We are to do this without wavering, without wavering.

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So what are we to do? Hold fast that objective truth which is the source and the ground of your hope in this life and in the life to come.

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Hold it, retain it, seize it, and don't let it go. Don't let go of it.

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And you are to do this without wavering. This is the explanation that we're looking at this morning, we're to do this without wavering.

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Without wavering, that is an expressive term, it is a colorful term that the author uses there. The phrase without wavering is the translation of one

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Greek word, aklenes, aklenes, a, meaning without or not, and klenes, which means to incline or to bend to one side.

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It describes something that is bent, so if they were to use it in the verb form, it would be used to describe the act of laying back or reclining as in a stretcher or in a bed or at a table or in a recliner.

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It would also be used to lean towards something or to bow towards something, to bend down towards something, that's the idea.

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It was actually used in that day of having partiality towards something, of being partial towards something. You bend that way.

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You and I use that language the same way today. We use, we talk about I'm kind of inclined to something, right, you have a partiality towards something.

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I kind of lean towards, and we use the same language to describe something that we are partial towards, something that we are leaning towards.

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Would you like to go out this afternoon to dinner with Chinese food or with Mexican food? You say, well,

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I'm kind of inclined. I'm kind of klene. I'm kind of inclined to go to Mexican, right, or I kind of lean.

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I kind of lean towards going Mexican this afternoon. I have a partiality towards that. And Ed, if you're listening, I apologize for the cultural appropriation, but it's just a sermon illustration.

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Right, I have an inclination or a bent in a certain direction. That's the idea of klene. Well, a klene means that you are without that bend, where you don't have a bent or an inclination towards something.

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You are without any kind, so the idea is not just wavering in the sense of something going back and forth or flopping around, but something that is stiff, something that is immovable, something resolute that does not incline one direction or another.

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You say it's not bent or it's not inclined in which direction? In any direction. It's not inclined in any direction.

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It is straight up standing in something and it is immovable in what it stands on.

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So as long as we are describing something that is oriented toward our confession of hope that we have in Jesus Christ, you stand immovable in that and you are not bent or inclined in any direction that the world pushes you.

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You're not bent or inclined in any direction that your internal desires or your flesh might drive you.

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You're without wavering. You're without any inclination, aklinas. The definition means without bending away or bowing in some direction to some alternate conviction, unbending.

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And listen, the world pushes you in two ways. The world pushes you externally.

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There's pressure externally all the time from the world around us to compromise on things. And I described some of the ways that that happens earlier, right, as we started.

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They seek to punish you for holding on to the truth. You just want to meet with the church of God and fellowship and worship with Him?

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Well, don't you know that we're in the middle of a health crisis? Looking around I can see that all of you panicked over that.

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Don't you know that we're in the middle of a health crisis? What's the next crisis that's going to keep us from worshiping God? Environmental crisis?

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I've been blowing that trumpet since I was this tall. For those of you on this side, well, since I was this tall, they've been blowing that trumpet.

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There's global cooling. There's global warming. There's climate change. There's always going to be some crisis that the world will force you, try and force you to bend toward, to compromise your convictions toward.

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The world is always moving its goalposts. They will try and cancel you for your convictions. They will try and run you out of town for your convictions.

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They will try and not give you a job because of your convictions. They'll take you off their servers. They will boot you off of social media.

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They will not want you as part of their dinner parties. External pressure.

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And then there's internal pressure. There is something inside of us that loves the world, and we have to crucify and mortify that constantly.

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There is something inside of us that is inclined to go along to get along. It's called the flesh. There's something inside of us that longs for the days when things were different, the days when we were different.

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There's something inside of us that would always be tending to go back in that direction. Something wants to bend in that way, and the world, like a magnet, attaches to that thing inside of us and wants to bend us in any direction except the truth.

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That's the allure of the world. And we are called in the midst of that to be unbending, to be unbending, to not be inclined or bent in any direction other than positioned on the truth, other than focused on the truth.

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And we are to be resolute in it, immovable, and a constancy, a steadfast faithfulness to the truth and unchanging.

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By the way, being unchanging is not a bad thing. People say, you just need to change with the times. How can you be so stuck in, what was that, the truth?

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Yeah. How can you be so stuck in the truth way back then? You need to change with the times. Being unchanging and unchangeable is not a bad thing.

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God is unchanging and unchangeable. He does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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His nature does not change. His purposes do not change. His promises do not change. And if that is the standard, then changing to go along with the times is a horrible idea.

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And you and I are to be resolute, unbending, faithfulness, steadfast, and not changing in it.

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Now, this doesn't describe a Stoicism. I'm not describing a Stoicism. Do you understand the difference between Stoicism and being resolute in a position or a conviction?

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Stoicism is where you are unchanged by anything because you have no emotional reaction to what goes on.

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Stoicism is just an apathy. It's just, my wife could die today, and Stoically I would just say, okay, surah, surah, unaffected by it, unchanged by it.

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It doesn't have any effect on my life. It doesn't have any effect on my thinking. I'm just gonna go on with it. That's Stoicism.

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That's not what we're describing. This is not describing being unbent or unchanged emotionally, being unaffected emotionally, having no passions, having no affections, no desires or loves or anything like that.

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It doesn't describe not weeping or mourning over the lost or over the loss of certain things or over the way that the world is going.

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That would be Stoicism. This is not describing a Stoic response to anything. It is describing a commitment to the truth, an unbending, unwavering commitment to the truth.

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That does not flex with the whims of the world, that does not flex or go along with the spirit of the age.

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It is holding fast to the gospel, which we know is our hope. We have made a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, and we have abandoned our own righteousness, and we have abandoned our own hopes at righteousness and our own ability to please

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God. We have abandoned all of that, and instead, you and I have embraced, if you're in Jesus Christ, you have embraced the doing and the dying of another who died in your stead.

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And that and His work is your hope, that is your confidence. Don't waver from that.

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It doesn't mean that you're unaffected by anything that goes around you. It means that you're unbent by anything that goes on around you.

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Look, the rains come and they blow against that steel beam that is sitting in the concrete that is immovable.

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The rains come and it gets cold and it gets hot. The beam is affected by everything going on around it in terms of what it experiences, but it is unbent by them.

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That is what you and I are to be. We might grow cold and hot. We might grow affectionate towards something. We might have loves.

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We might be discouraged and disappointed and cry, but we're unbent by that. We don't conform to the world and change our tune and go along with the marching drum of Satan's latest idea just because it's fashionable and desirous.

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We don't do that. We're unbent by these things. We reject the lives of the world and all of its priorities, and there's always a temptation to bend in every generation.

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Every generation of Christians faces the temptation to waver, to be bent, and to be moved by everything around us.

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It looks different in every generation. Satan is like a football coach. I usually don't try and tie

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Satan to football at any point just simply because I enjoy the game, but Satan is like a football coach. He calls the plays, and every time his team steps up to the line of scrimmage, it's a different play that he's calling, so it looks different, but he always has the same goal.

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It's the same game. It's the same goal that's in mind, though his plays change over the ages. In the first century, the desire or the impetus to bend for the first century

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Christians was different than it is for us. In the first century, to those who were reading this epistle originally, the desire to bend came in the form of being pulled back to that old system, which is why the author has spent ten and a half chapters reminding his readers of the inferiority of the old covenant, that those sacrifices and the temple and the priesthood and the priest and all that was done under that old covenant simply prepared the way for the new covenant, and that the new covenant is superior in every way.

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And the first century Christians who were Jews, to whom this epistle was written, they were looking back to that old system and saying, well, wouldn't it be great to go back to that?

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I mean, the smells and the bells of that sacrifice and all of the forms of that and all the feelings of that, that's where our family is at, and we've kind of come out of that, and we've embraced

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Jesus the Messiah, but all of my cousins and my aunts and my uncles and my mom and dad are all back there, and they're wanting me to go back and embrace that and to get off this

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Jesus fella, and to leave this whole Christianity thing in the dust and go back to what we've known for centuries.

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Our whole family is there, and there was pressure there for them to compromise by going back to the old covenant.

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And the author is saying, you have nothing under the old covenant, why would you want to go back to that inferior covenant? In fact, this is the direct application of this passage in terms of the author here.

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Look at chapter 10, beginning at verse 32.

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Here is how he, after the warning passage, addresses it to these Christians. This is the direct application to those first century

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Christians. But remember the former days when after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.

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For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.

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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 was promised.

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For yet in a little while, he who is coming 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.

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But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. What is the author saying?

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Remember those early days when you first came to Christ and you were excited, and you suffered the seizure of your property, and the reproaches of those who cast their reproach upon you for your commitment to Christ.

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When you left all of that behind, you came into the new covenant, you made that confession of faith. Remember that? Times were good.

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And now you're longing to go back to that. And the author says, if you go back to that, you are shrinking back to the destruction of your soul, because there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, if you walk away from the new covenant.

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That's the direct application to those first century Christians. They were like, in many ways, like the children of Israel coming out of Egypt.

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Remember that? He came out of Egypt, and the Lord showed his deliverance by the ten plagues upon the land of Egypt, culminating with that last one in Passover, and finally,

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Pharaoh drove them out, said, go, go out into the wilderness, and they left, and all of them, they plundered the Egyptians, went out into the wilderness, and they were out there and came all the way through the

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Red Sea, and what did they say when they got on the other side of the Red Sea? Remember how good it was back in Egypt?

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How good it was? We had melons, and we had onions, and we had leeks. Do you remember the fresh vegetables?

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The cucumbers were to die for, and now we're out here in the wilderness, and we're eating manna every day, and looking for water.

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Remember the good times back in Egypt? And you want to drop yourself, parachute yourself right into that reality and say, good times in Egypt, you were slaves.

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Yeah, but don't you remember sitting by the bank of the Nile, how great that was? You were down at the bank of the

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Nile, gathering water to make bricks, like Dory the clownfish. They have no memory whatsoever.

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All they can remember is the good things that existed back then. They want the cucumbers and the leeks, and they forget the slavery, and the misery, and the brick -making, and the whippings, and the beatings, and waking up at sunrise, and working past dark.

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They forgot all of that, and their hearts were bent, kleenex, to Egypt, and to slavery, and to what they had.

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The first century Christians, the same way. Oh, remember the old covenant? Remember how good that was?

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What was good about it? The fact that your high priest is a reprobate, who hates

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God, and crucified your Messiah? That's what you think is good? The sacrifices every month, you thought that was good?

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Never knowing if your sins were forgiven, you thought that was good? Having to do that every month, you think that was good? The priesthood, which was continually turning over and over again, never knowing who the next high priest was going to be, never knowing if he offered adequate intercession for you, never knowing if what he did was perfectly good for sacrifice for your sins, never having your conscience cleansed, you think that was good?

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That was the old covenant. Don't go back to that. Hold fast your confession of faith, firm until the end.

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Do not be bent by your relatives, and your friends, and everybody from your past who says, hey, come on back to the world, and enjoy that.

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You and I are to be immovable. Without wavering, we are to hold fast our confession of faith. For us, in our context, it's a little bit different.

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Like I say, Satan's the head coach, and not just to the Seahawks, but like I say, he's the head coach.

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Satan's the head coach, and he calls the plays, and the play is different. In the first century, the play was, get all of your unbelieving family members to bring you back into Judaism.

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Today the play is just slightly different. Today the play call is, get them to compromise their moral standards, and compromise their conviction of the truth, to go back to the be more worldly, to stop telling us what the truth is, to stop proclaiming the gospel, and to stop standing for Christ and his church.

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That's the play call today. You and I aren't tempted to go back to the old covenant, offer animal sacrifices at a temple in Jerusalem.

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There's no temptation there. But there is the temptation to, you compromise.

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You compromise what you believe. Or you are a hateful, sexist, misogynistic, intolerant bigot, whose opinion is not even worthy to be heard in today's environment.

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You deserve to not even be regarded as a person, because of what you believe. Then the pressure is, well, if I am going to believe this,

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I'll be quiet about it, and not say anything about it, and hopefully I'll be accepted by the world.

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If you don't go along, and try and gain the world's approval, they're going to want to destroy your reputation. If you do not go along intellectually with the world, they're going to regard you as an unscientific rube of a bygone era.

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They will say, you actually believe in miracles and the resurrection of Jesus Christ? You know how unscientific that is?

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Says the people who believe there are 666 genders. I chose that number intentionally. Says the people who believe there are that many genders.

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You know how unscientific that is? You know how unenlightened that is? Do you really care what the world thinks? You shouldn't.

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Listen, if you have the approval of the king of kings, why would you care what the peasants think? That's the only thing that you and I have to worry about, is if we have the approval of the king of kings.

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And if we have his approval, then the world will be damned, literally.

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So why do we care what they think? Let's stand for the truth, and do so unbendingly. If you have set people by your stand against certain lifestyles, or certain predilections, or certain views of gender, or whatever it is, if you're going to upset people with that, that's the world's way of thinking.

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You're either going to compromise the truth and bend towards it, or you're going to stand truth, and in the truth, unwavering.

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Currently, if you do not affirm and celebrate every godless, anti -Christian conviction and worldview, and if you will not affirm and celebrate every aberrant and destructive lifestyle, every progressive

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Marxist ideology, and every satanic spirit of the age lie belched up from the pit of hell, you're public enemy number one.

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I think you and I need to get used to being public enemy number one. And I say, own it.

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Own it. Because we're not the public's enemy. We're only their enemy because we tell them the truth.

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And if you don't tell them the truth, you're not their enemy. The world hates you because you're not of the world. If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because he called you out of the world, therefore, for this reason, the world hates you.

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You're his and you were his from before the foundation of the world when the father gave you to the son, and the son claimed you were his.

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You were his then, and because he called you out of the world, for that reason, the world hates you. Let the world hate.

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You are to hold fast your confession of faith firm until the end, and do so without wavering and without compromise and without bending in any direction.

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And all around us, there is compromise on every side. And at the risk of dating this message and dating what

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I'm about to say, I'll give you some examples from just within the last month. Within the last month, a Christian adoption service has decided that they are now going to cater to homosexual couples.

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They weren't forced to do this. Nobody was going to prison for doing this. They just decided that they were going to do it, a

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Christian adoption agency. Max Lucado, just three weeks ago, issued a public apology for something he said about homosexuality back in 2004.

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He said, I regret that my words were used to harm people. You say, what did he say that was so hurtful and harmful?

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He said what the Bible says about homosexual lifestyle and activity. He said that back in 2004. Three weeks ago, he issued an apology for it, for saying what the

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Bible says. Now, does that mean that he's broken? Does that mean that he's an apostate? Doesn't mean that.

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It doesn't mean that he is bent over like a single blade of grass in a tornado right now.

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He's bent. He's Kleenex. He's not holding the truth without wavering. The Southern Baptist Convention this

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June, as part of their normal annual convention discussion, they're going to bring up critical race theory and social justice and the whole woke progressive

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Christianity nonsense. All of the CRT and how we need to read the Bible in the light of modern racial theories and the 1619 project and all of that liberal idea that has taken over the gospel coalition that is about to take over the entire

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Southern Baptist denomination, they want to discuss that at their convention. Not only that, but they're going to have conversations about women in ministry and women being pastors.

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Last year, one year ago, they were having a discussion about whether Beth Moore would be a good president for the Southern Baptist Convention.

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Listen, if you are at the point where you are discussing and having conversations about women being pastors and allowing homosexuals to be pastors of your churches, you're gone.

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There's nothing to discuss. You're gone. It's just a matter of time before you fall off the cliff. You don't even discuss these things.

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See, that's wavering. Right? Let's just have a conversation about it. Let's just have a conversation about it. I'm not saying we need to change anything.

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Let's just have a conversation about it. You know how that always ends? Changing things. That's how it always ends because that's always the goal, to just talk about it, just waver.

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Let's just get us to all waver until we finally break and bend. That's the game plan. That's the coach's goal in our day.

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The world is playing the tune. Satan's calling the plays and the visible church is marching along with it.

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And unbending men and women are becoming fewer and fewer. To quote that great philosopher, Elrond, our list of allies grows thin,

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Gandalf. Our list of allies grows thin and it is growing thinner by the day.

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It's growing thinner by the day. You better get used to watching people that you thought were once solid in the faith fold like a house of cards in the days that are to come.

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Because people that we think have been anchored in truth and are unbending and unbendable, they're going to bend and waver and break.

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You see, when you start making apologies for things you said that were biblical 15 years ago, you're already wavering.

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Now the question is not whether or not you will break once you start to waver. The question is only how much pressure does the world have to put on you before you break?

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Because you've already demonstrated that you're willing to bend. You've already demonstrated that you're willing to waver.

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And once you start wavering, the world never says, oh, you made an apology? Oh, you don't really believe that now?

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Okay, well, we'll just ignore it. We'll forget it. Let's just let it all pass. Has that ever happened in the history of our modern day? No. It just gets worse.

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They ratchet up the pressure. You can do nothing to satisfy the world, so don't even give them the first step.

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You can do nothing to satisfy the world except full abandonment of everything that is true.

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That will satisfy the world. Join them. Celebrate with them. Affirm everything that they affirm.

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Affirm every spirit of the age lie. Affirm it all, and then they will embrace you.

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Then they will love you. But short of that, be ready to start watching your heroes fall, because it's already started.

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It's not going to get any better. Unless the Lord rescues us and sends revival to this land, it is not going to get any better.

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Though the list of our allies grows thin, it is not ours to worry about how many people stand with us. It is ours to stand.

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That's all we're called to do. We're not called to make other people stand, and we're not called to worry and spend blood, sweat, and tears agonizing over how few of us are actually standing.

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We're just called to stand. That's what God has given to us to do. To hold fast to our confidence, our hope, our convictions, our confession, and to do so without wavering, without doubt or unbelief, because you and I have not followed cleverly devised fables.

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Our confidence is not in myths and stories and genealogies and old tales.

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Our faith is not built on shifting sand. We have the truth, and there is no excuse for unbelief.

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There is no excuse for apostasy, and there is no excuse for shrinking back to destruction. We have the truth.

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We know the truth. It is revealed, and we are called, yea, we are commanded to hold fast to our confession of hope, firm and to the end, to do so without wavering, without bending in any direction that the winds blow, and to not do so chasing the world and its approval and chasing the world and its reputation or chasing the world and its acceptance.

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In any way, we are to do so without bending. Hold fast your confession of your hope without wavering, because you have the confidence that you have access to the throne room of heaven, full access to the throne of God because of what

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Christ has done. And further, you have a high priest over the house of God who intercedes for you. He is in heaven right now for you, and if that is true, there is no excuse for compromise.

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If you compromise, it is only because you have failed to understand and apprehend the reality that you have full access to the throne room of God and that you have a great high priest over the house of God.

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Those two things are true. You hold fast, Christian. You hold fast without wavering.

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There is no excuse for unbelief and no excuse for compromise. Why would you let go of something that is that sure and that certain and that steadfast?

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That's inexcusable. That's the explanation.

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That's what it means to do this without wavering. The next one would be the motivation, if we had time to do that.

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We're not going to. I do realize that I just preached on one Greek word, aklinas, but in English it was two words without wavering, so we actually got twice as much done as you might have originally thought.

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Okay, so that's the explanation of how we are to hold fast our confidence. We are to do so without wavering.

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Next time, next week, we will look at what the faithfulness of God means and what it means to this.

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Why is this a motivation that God is faithful? Why is that a motivation for us holding fast to our confession of hope firm and to the end?

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It certainly is a motivation, so we'll deal with that next time. Let's pray together. Father, you are so gracious and so good to save the people for your own eternal glory and then to secure them in this world and to secure them everlastingly.

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We thank you that our salvation does not rest upon our ability to cling to you. You have commanded us to do so, but you have also given us the strength to do so, and your word encourages us to do so.

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We pray at this time in the midst of this land where we are at that you would give us spines of steel, that you would strengthen our hearts in your word and by your truth to be unashamed of the truth, unashamed of the gospel, and unashamed of your word, that we may stand as your people without wavering in the face of all of the world's hatred and hostility, that we would do so with love and grace, that we would do so with courage and conviction.

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We desire that you would be honored and glorified through the stand of your people for the gospel truth.

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We know that your word always accomplishes what you intend for it. Your word always accomplishes what you send it forth to do, and so we can have absolute confidence in your sovereignty and in your power to use your word and us as your ambassadors to reach a lost and dying world.

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We pray for revival amongst those who are around us in our own hearts as well, but that it may truly be something that may spread across this entire land.

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We know that it can only happen through the faithful preaching of your word and as a work of your Holy Spirit, so we pray that you would do that.

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And in the midst of whatever you have called us to, we pray that you would give us the courage to be faithful. If you have appointed for us exile from this world, then we will join the ranks of those who have gone before who have also been exiled for their faith.

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If you have appointed for us suffering for our faith, we will embrace that alongside of others who have suffered likewise for the faith.

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For you will give us the courage in the moment and in the hour when we will face these things to do what pleases you. Strengthen us now with that hope and in our confession, and may you give us grace to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, firm to the very end with full assurance because Christ is in heaven for us and intercedes, and we ask that you would do this for His sake and in His name.

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The communion service that we had planned was, well, I had a whole transition from what should have been the end of the message to end of communion, so I will just wing this.

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Because we have a high priest over the house of God who has given us access to the throne of God, we are able to do so without wavering, we are able to hold fast without wavering.

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Our faith and our confidence rests not in our own righteousness and not in our own doing or our own ability to hold fast or our own ability to be faithful.

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Our faith and our confidence, especially that for eternal life and righteousness, rests upon the complete work of the

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Lord Jesus Christ in His perfect life and in His perfect death. So the gospel message is a very simple one, that you and I are under the wrath of God, that we deserve

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His judgment for our sins. We have lied, we have stolen, we have blasphemed His name, we have dishonored

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Him, we have worshipped other gods, we have not honored our parents, we have lusted after people who are not our spouses, we have committed adultery in the heart, we have committed murder in the heart.

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All of those violations of the Ten Commandments deserve the wrath and judgment of God upon us.

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We deserve to be punished, we deserve an eternal hell because that is what our sin has merited, that is what our sin has warranted.

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But the good news is that God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life into this world,

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He lived a perfect life fulfilling all of the law, He did so on our behalf so that in His dying

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He might bear the wrath and the penalty and the sin of all who will ever believe.

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So that there is in the person of Christ and because of His work righteousness to avail for you before the throne of God and there is forgiveness available for you before the throne of God because of what

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Christ has done. The good news is that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ which was made for sinners is able to forgive you and make you righteous in the sight of God, which you desperately need.

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You have no righteousness, we have no righteousness apart from Him. In fact, all we have is a sin debt that must be atoned for.

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But Jesus Christ died to save sinners and if you will come to Him in repentance and faith,

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He will forgive your sin, He will save you everlastingly and He will adopt you into His family and give you

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His righteousness, that is the gospel. It is that that we celebrate in our communion meal, in our time together in worship and fellowship around the

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Lord's table. The bread and the juice are not magical or mystical elements that somehow convey salvation.

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This is not a re -sacrificing of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. These elements are symbols of what was done for us on the cross 2 ,000 years ago.

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They are symbols of that which has redeemed us, namely the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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If you are not a believer here this morning, I would encourage you to not partake of these elements because Scripture warns that you are eating and drinking judgment to yourself because you are doing this in an unworthy manner.

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This is for believers, this is for those who are Christians. So if you are uncertain as to whether or not you are a Christian, don't partake.

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And Christian, if you are living in an unrepentant sin and you know this and you are not repenting of that and you are not battling it, do not partake of these elements.

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That is to eat and drink in an unworthy manner as well. We are to judge ourselves, that is we are to examine our own hearts and we are to confess our sins to the

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Lord. And the idea is not that we are perfect before we partake of communion, but the idea is that we are repentant before we partake of communion, acknowledging that our sin is what made the sacrifice of Christ necessary and His sacrifice is what made our salvation possible.

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And that is what we are remembering. So let us bow our heads, we'll have a time of self -examination and then

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I will lead us in prayer and then call the ushers forward to help serve the elements. Let's bow our heads. Our Father, the weight of our sin was more than we could ever bear.

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Even one sin that we have committed would be worthy of eternal judgment because of the great God and the glorious God against whom that sin is committed.

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And if we were to bear our own sin everlastingly, we would be undone.

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And we are thankful that You made us to know the depth of our own sin so that we could find remedy in the person of Christ and in His work.

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So we confess to You our iniquity, we confess to You our transgression, we know that we are still sinners, we long to be made perfectly righteous in all of our conduct and in our doing.

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And yet in this world we are still shackled to these bodies of death. We long to be sanctified and to grow in holiness and in obedience and we long for grace to mortify sin, to put it to death, to fight the fight against sin and to live in obedience and in righteousness.

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We thank You for Your forgiveness and Your provision of forgiveness for those sins that we are aware of and even those sins that we are not aware of.

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If You were to make us aware of all of our iniquities even right now, it would overwhelm us to know of all of the ways in which we have violated

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Your law and which we have sinned against You in thought, word and deed. So we confess this to You, we thank

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You for the provision of Jesus Christ and for the full and free forgiveness that is ours through Him and because of His work.

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And so we trust not in our own righteousness and we trust not in our own doing but in the sacrifice of Christ and Christ alone, in whose name we pray, amen.