The Just Shall Live By Faith, Part 2 (Hebrews 10:38-39)

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Noah: A Faith-Filled Work, Part 3 (Hebrews 11:7)

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Turn now, please, to Hebrews chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10, and this will be for the last time that you're turning to Hebrews chapter 10.

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We are finishing the chapter today. We're going to read together verses 35 through verse 39, and then we'll open in prayer.

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Hebrews 10, beginning at verse 35, 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 very 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. Let's pray together.

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Our Father, it is our desire that we would understand your word. You have given it to us so that we may obey it, so that we may know you, in knowing you that our worship may be deep and profound, that our walk may be obedient and pure and honoring to you, and so we pray that you would use your word to accomplish in us every good work and every good deed.

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We pray that you would have your way in our hearts this morning and that you would give us grace not only to understand your word but to obey it.

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Help us to appreciate what you have written here and the part that we play in your redemptive plan, and we ask that you would be glorified through all that is said and done from here forward, we ask in Christ's name, amen.

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Well, as I said, we are finishing chapter 10 today, looking at these concluding words of the warning passage.

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One of the things that I love about the study of the book of Hebrews and have enjoyed all the way through Hebrews is all of the opportunities that this book has given us to go back into the

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Old Testament and to cover some of the quotations and the allusions and the Old Testament background, because Hebrew is…the book of Hebrews is so steeped in that Old Covenant and Old Testament understanding.

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These Jews would have been familiar with all of these things. And so, we have had the opportunity to go back into the

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Old Testament when called upon, and as you read through the book of Hebrews, you see over and over again all of these references to Old Testament text.

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And we did that last week when we took the reference in verse 39, 38, sorry, my righteous one shall live by his faith, and we jumped back into the book of Habakkuk and saw the context of that original quotation and saw the background of that, of that great statement which

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James Montgomery Boyce said is probably not just a great statement of Scripture but one of the, if not the greatest statement in all of Scripture.

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And we looked at the context of that to see how pertinent it is to our time, and we saw that there are a lot of similarities between the time of Habakkuk and the time of these early

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Hebrew Christians, and there are a lot of similarities between the time of these early Hebrew Christians and our time today, which means that there are a lot of similarities between our time and Habakkuk's time.

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It's almost as if the message remains the same and the human condition has not changed and everything goes on just as it has from the beginning, and vanity of vanity is all is vanity and there's nothing new under the sun, right?

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So you can go back to Habakkuk's time and see that what he talked about, the lessons that we learned there are just like pulled out of today's headlines.

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And it shows us, understanding that context helps us to appreciate what Habakkuk meant when he said, the righteous shall live by faith.

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And we have seen and we are seeing that living by faith means that we live in light of the coming of the

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Lord and the judgment that that will bring upon an unbelieving world and the reward that that will bring to the righteous.

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We live by faith when we are, as the righteous, surrounded by the wicked and surrounded by the enemies of the gospel, and we live by faith in a land that is facing and is under divine judgment for its sin, and a church really writ large across America that is rushing toward apostasy at a breakneck speed.

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How did the righteous respond in such a condition? How are we to live in such a situation? The same way that Habakkuk did, we live by faith.

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The same way that the early Hebrew Christians did in the city of Jerusalem, in a nation that saw the judgment of God bearing down upon it, in a nation where the wicked surrounded the righteous, in a nation where the judgment was coming and it was certain, we live by faith and we do the same thing today.

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This phrase that we find in verse 38, my righteous one shall live by faith, that is used three times in the

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New Testament. I gave you a summary of how they were used last week. In the book of Romans, it is the just that is explained as Paul emphasizes that word just or justice.

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What does God's justice look like? How are we justified? What is the just one? On what basis does our justification come?

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Paul describes just and justification in the book of Romans. Those two words shall live are really expounded on in the book of Galatians where the emphasis is on the fact that we live by faith and not living by the law.

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And then in the book of Hebrews, it is the words by faith that the author picks up and is really emphasizing. The just shall live by faith.

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Romans, Galatians and Hebrews give us a perfect picture of what it means for the just to live by faith. Those who have been justified, a past action, are justified and made just on the basis of faith.

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Those who are made just on the basis of faith continue to live a just life on the basis of faith. We live and walk day by day in faith and those who have been justified and live by faith, this is where Hebrews comes in, go all the way to the end, continue all the way to the end in that faith, even dying as it were without ever seeing the promises fulfilled.

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Just as the Old Testament saints in Hebrews chapter 11, they lived in faith, they died in faith, never seeing the promises in their own lifetime, but the faith that justifies us and the faith that sanctifies us and allows us to live in this world is also a faith that will continue all the way to the end.

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Even if we don't see the fulfillment of promises in our lifetime, that faith will continue and bear fruit all the way to the end.

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It perseveres to the end because it is not a faith that comes and goes. It's not a faith that waxes and wanes.

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It's not a faith that is here today and gone tomorrow. It is a faith that having justified us and sanctified us has secured us and will persevere and preserve us all the way to the very end.

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So that's the past of salvation, the present of salvation, and the future of salvation. It is all ruled by faith.

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So the emphasis in the book of Hebrews, our focus here is on faith as a mark of the Christian.

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And we see that faith marks the true believer, that's verse 38, and faith keeps or preserves the true believer, and that is verse 39, we are of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

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So the emphasis on this quotation in Hebrews is not so much on what justifies us, faith as opposed to works, or what sanctifies us, faith as opposed to law, but what keeps, preserves, and continues all the way to the end, that is faith as opposed to apostasy.

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And remember in the context, the context is making this distinction, this contrast between those who continue, persevere, to the preserving of the soul, and those who fall away or shrink back to destruction.

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It is a contrast between the true believer and the apostate, the one who is not a true believer at all. So let's look first at faith as a mark of the righteous.

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You'll notice in verse 38, and I pointed this out a couple of weeks ago, that the quotation in verse 38 is not identical or exactly as we would find it in Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 4 where the quotation is taken from.

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In fact, if you just let your eyes read through verse 38, and I'll read to you Habakkuk 2 verse 4,

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I want you to notice the differences here. Habakkuk 2 verse 4, behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith.

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Now, the only thing that is really almost identical is that phrase, the righteous will live by his faith.

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But other than that, the wording is changed ever so slightly, and the order of the phrases is put in reverse order.

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Did you notice that? Habakkuk begins with the description of the proud one and his soul not being right, and then says, my righteous shall live by faith.

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Hebrews reverses that order, but my righteous shall live by faith, and then describes the one who shrinks back in whom

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God's soul has no pleasure in him. So the order of phrases is reversed, and the wording is a little different, and there are two reasons for this, and I'm just reviewing again, mentioning what

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I mentioned two weeks ago. The two reasons are because the author is not giving an exact quotation. He's not intending to quote exactly what the

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Old Testament text says. He is borrowing the wording of, you remember, Isaiah 26 and Habakkuk chapter 2.

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He's borrowing the wording, and he's using the wording to call to mind the context and the promises of those two passages.

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But he changes the wording ever so slightly and intentionally, which is why he doesn't cite it like he does other

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Scripture quotations when he says, and as he says, or as the Spirit says, or as God says, and then quotes it.

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He doesn't do that to introduce this quotation. He's borrowing the prophetic language to call to our mind those contexts, and he does accurately and strictly quote, but my righteous shall live by his faith.

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But the rest of the language he changes for a particular reason, and that is to draw a series of contrasts, to draw a series of contrasts.

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The first contrast is between the coming of the Babylonian judgment that we talked about last week and the week prior to that, and the coming of the

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Lord and His judgment and reward for believers. There's a contrast that is intended there. The author is intending to remind us that just as God promised that Babylon would conquer the land, come in and conquer the land, and bring judgment upon a disobedient and rebellious people, and God would preserve the righteous through that, so it is also true that the

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Lord Jesus Christ will likewise, just as certainly return, He will bring judgment upon an unbelieving world and the righteous are to live by faith in the light of that coming judgment, knowing that for the righteous it will not be a judgment for our sin.

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Instead it will be a bringing with Him His reward for us. So that's the first contrast, and the second is in verse 38, and that's to draw the contrast between the righteous one and the one who shrinks back.

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It is in the wording of Habakkuk, the proud one, and his soul is not right within him.

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And here the author uses the same context, but he changes the wording to be the soul, the one who shrinks back is the proud one.

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And so the contrast is, or the comparison really is between the proud one, described in Habakkuk, and the one who shrinks back.

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In other words, just as in Habakkuk 2 there is a contrast between the wicked and the unrighteous, so in Hebrews chapter 10 there is a contrast between the wicked and the unrighteous.

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The wicked in Habakkuk are the proud ones, the wicked in Hebrews are the ones who are unrighteous, who shrink back from salvation, have not entered into salvation, they are professors.

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They are mere professors of Christianity and nothing more. That's the contrast here. And it fits with the context since the author is describing here the difference between apostates and apostasy.

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Remember, we are talking about the warning passage. He is warning against those, in verse 26, who would go on sinning willfully even after receiving the knowledge of the truth.

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So he adjusts the wording here in order to draw the distinction between the wicked one, the unrighteous one, who will shrink back in times of hostility, and the righteous one, the one who is justified, whose faith preserves him all the way through that hostility to the very end.

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So there is a contrast between the righteous and the wicked, and the one who shrinks back, the unrighteous, and the one who continues on, that is the righteous one.

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And the emphasis of this passage is on faith as opposed to apostasy, and so the marks of faith are spelled out, the marks of apostasy are spelled out, the results of faith are spelled out, and the results of apostasy are spelled out, and the fruits of faith are described, and the fruits of apostasy are described.

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So let's break down this phrase that the righteous one shall live by his faith. Let's just deal with it in those two -word increments that I gave you earlier, the just shall live by faith.

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The just, when you read the word just in this context, don't think in your minds of the one who is preoccupied with justice, or the one who is himself doing what is just, because that's not the idea.

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The idea here is not somebody who has a preoccupation or a fixation upon justice, like a judge would, right?

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I have to make sure that everything is just. One of my children has a fixation with justice. If anything is unjust, she is just livid over it.

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It just bakes her bagels when something doesn't happen and everything is not absolutely fair. That's not what we're talking about, not one who is just, man,

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I've got to have everything just and right. That's not what's being described. What is being described is the one who is just, and by just, what we're describing is one who has been justified or made righteous, because the word just and righteous, they're synonyms virtually.

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We're describing one here, one who is righteous, and again, we're not describing one here who is necessarily fixated upon righteousness, and we're not describing one who is necessarily righteous in all of their conduct, perfectly holy, pure, and righteous, but we are describing one here who has been justified or made righteous in terms of his standing before God.

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That is what the righteous are. If you are in Jesus Christ by virtue of repentance and faith in Him and you have trusted in the finished work of Christ for your salvation, you are just, you are righteous.

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Even though you may not at this moment be practicing perfect righteousness, and I promise you you're not, but your righteous standing does not depend upon you being perfectly righteous in all of your conduct.

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Your righteous standing before God depends on someone else who was perfectly righteous before God in all of his conduct.

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And that righteousness which is perfect, that righteousness which is infinite, is imputed to you.

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It is credited to your account at the moment of faith. That is the just one. So the just are made just, we are declared righteous and made righteous, not because of our conduct, because of somebody else's conduct, and we are declared righteous, we would say, even while we were in a sinning state.

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At the moment that God justified me, my repentance was not sufficient to please Him, nor were my deeds sufficient to please

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Him, nor my sorrow over my sin sufficient to please Him. In fact, I have never had adequate repentance or adequate righteousness in myself to merit anything before God.

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But on the basis of the works of another who had perfect and infinite righteousness, you and I are credited that righteousness.

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It is imputed to our account so that we are in the eyes of God perfectly righteous, seen as if we have never sinned.

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God sees the just one as if he has never sinned. That should motivate you to fight the battle against sin.

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My justification does not depend on how well I live out a righteous life. My justification is entirely dependent upon how well someone else lived out their righteous life, and that is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That's why Romans 5 verse 1 says, we have been justified, we have been declared righteous by faith, and we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. The hostility has been removed. All of that sin that rested upon my head and upon my back, which

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God was justly and rightly angry over, in which His wrath hung over that sin, all of that sin has been removed.

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So now I have peace with God. I have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And this was declared true of me, and it was declared true of you if you are in Jesus Christ, even though you have never done any act that is righteous enough to merit any gift of God or any grace from God.

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See this is the age -old question of how can a man be made right before God, knowing the weight of our sin? How can

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I be made clean? When I stand before God in my sin, and we'd say as the psalmist, if the

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Lord were to count our iniquities, who could stand before Him? Knowing that every thought of our hearts and our minds is seen by Him in perfect righteousness.

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He knows every deed that we have done in light and in darkness, alone or with someone else. He knows every thought we have had, every corrupt motive, everything we have done sinfully, whether we knew it or whether we didn't, whether we sin knowingly or unknowingly.

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He knows it all. It's all laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. And if He were to count up our iniquities,

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I could not even count them. I can't count that high. It would make the number of the national debt look like dice, threes and fours and fives.

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Our iniquities are so high and so egregious against God. So if He were to mark iniquity, who could stand?

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And then we come before God and we see our sin in the light of His law, and we say, then how can a man be just?

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How can God view me as righteous? Because He demands of me righteousness to enter His kingdom. So how can

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I be made righteous? Are there works that I can do? And how many works do

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I have to do to overcome that sin debt? Is there some sacrifice that I can make?

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And how many sacrifices do I need to make to overcome that sin debt? Is there some work of penance?

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Are there righteous people who have done works of righteousness that I can kind of tap into like a treasury of merit, that I can lean upon those and ask for that merit to be applied to me?

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Some other sinner who has done more than the works that he should have done to pay for his sin, he's done a few extra so he can kind of give those works to me and it can be credited to my account.

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How can a man be made righteous? How can God be just, that is be perfectly just, execute perfect justice, and forgive the sinner?

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And this is what we sang about at the beginning. It is at the cross that love and justice agree.

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Because at the cross, because somebody else was punished in my stead on my behalf, for that reason,

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I can be justified and be declared righteous. That's what we're talking about when we talk about justice and the just. And God, when

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He says that we are just and righteous, He's not saying something that is not true as if He's just wishfully thinking it.

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God's not saying, okay, for the sake of having a relationship with you, I'm just going to pretend like you've never sinned.

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Or I'm just going to say that you're just, I'm going to say that you're righteous, even though we both know that you're not. That is not how

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God executes His righteousness or gives His righteousness. Instead, the very thing that God demands, perfect righteousness,

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He provides for us. And He clothes us with it, so that in His sight, in His eyes, we are perfectly righteous.

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And then God can say of us, you are righteous. Not because we are doing righteousness, not because we have been righteous, but because He has credited that righteousness to our account when

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He has taken all of our sin away. That is how God can be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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God made Him, that is Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin, to be treated as sin in our place so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

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So that God treated the righteous one, the perfect righteous one, as if He were a sinner so that He can treat me, a sinner, as if I were perfectly righteous.

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On that basis, God can be gracious to me. He treated Christ who was infinite in righteousness as if He had committed an infinite amount of sin so that He might then give to me that infinite righteousness having taken away my infinite amount of sin.

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So there is an exchange that takes place. All of my sin is imputed and credited to His account, and He is treated as a sinner in the sight of God on the cross for my sake, and all of the righteousness that He has done and all of His righteous deeds are credited to me as if I get credit for every righteous thing that Jesus Christ has done.

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So it's not just that my sins are taken away. It's that I get credit for all of His righteousness. You get credit for all of His righteousness.

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That is a glorious and profound truth. That should excite you because that is the truth of the gospel. Now shall live.

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What does he mean by shall live? He says, you know, I don't think you're going to get to the end of the passage at this point, but we will. The just shall live.

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You and I begin our spiritual life. We begin our eternal life at the moment of our justification.

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We are justified by faith, so we are made alive at the point of our faith. Now the theologians among us will say, well, is it faith that brought us, made us alive, or did being alive result in our faith?

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I would say logically being alive resulted in our faith. Chronologically our faith results in us being alive. These two things cannot be separated.

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There's no such thing as a man who has faith that is unregenerated, and there's no such thing as a regenerated person who has no faith.

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So these two things go together. At the moment of our faith in Jesus Christ, and actually through that faith in Jesus Christ, we are regenerated.

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Faith is the instrument of our regeneration. It takes place at the moment of our regeneration, and it is inseparable from that act of regeneration.

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I would say we are like spiritually dead men who God regenerates us, and the very first thing we do is place faith in Jesus Christ.

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It is the instant fruit of our regeneration, and we are made alive by faith, and we continue to walk in this life by faith, our

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Christian life. So there's never a point where we say, well, faith served me really well for about five or ten years, and now

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I'm on my own. When you teach your children to walk, for a while they have to hold on to your finger or your hand, and they kind of walk, and they touch the couch, and they touch the coffee table or the side of the bed.

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They're able to walk that way. Pretty soon, they're able to walk by themselves. As Christians, it's never like that for us. We never get to a point where we say, faith was really good for five or ten years, and then

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I sort of, now I'm doing it on my own, so it's not my faith that has carried me through. I got it from here on out. No, we have been justified by faith, and we continue to live our lives and are sanctified by the same faith that saves us.

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It's my same trust in God and His promises. See, the promise that saved me was the promise that if I believe upon the

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Lord Jesus Christ, I will be saved. I believed that God's word was true, and that that sacrifice of the Son was sufficient to pay the price for my sin.

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And by that faith, in that promise, and in that God, I am saved. It is the same thing with my walk with Christ.

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Each and every day, I believe that God's word is true, His promises are true, and by that same faith that saves me, I continue to walk in obedience to Him.

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It's faith that saves me. It is faith that sanctifies us as well. All of life is lived by this faith, whether we are engaged in commerce or our career or at the office and our education, decisions big and small.

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The Christian brings every act of obedience. The Christian brings every thought, every deed.

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The Christian brings every decision, everything under the Lordship of Christ, so that it is all lived out as an expression of his faith and his trust in Jesus Christ.

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So our consuming motivation then is to say, is there something in my life that my faith must govern, that my trust in God must govern?

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I need to express that faith and my confidence in God in everything that I do in big and in small. So the just shall live by faith.

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And by the way, we shall live all the way into eternity by that same faith. I believe, well

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I would better say this, I know that there will be a resurrection of the just, and I know that I will stand in this world and I will see my

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Savior in His flesh and I will see it in this flesh. This flesh, died, decayed, buried, resurrected again,

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I will behold my Savior with these very eyes. This flesh and not another, but another flesh, but still this flesh, you understand what

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I'm talking about? It's a resurrected body. I know that that is true. So I know that the faith that saves me, justified me, sanctifies me, and that faith,

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I'm going to die with that faith, and that faith is going to see the resurrection of life at the end. Absolutely confident of that.

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So the just shall live by faith, and the purpose here is to define faith. The author really is introducing Hebrews chapter 11.

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We have faith in a God who keeps His promises. We believe that there's going to be, in verse 34, a better possession, a lasting one. Verse 35, a great reward.

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Verse 36, we're going to receive what was promised. We get the preservation of our soul, verse 39. All those rewards, all those blessings that we have been promised, our faith in Yahweh tells us that our trust in Him secures all of those things.

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So just as the saints of old believed that God was going to give to them a better possession, and a lasting city, and all the blessings that He promised to them, so our faith is the same.

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We have faith in the same God, and the same promises, and the same character of the same God to fulfill the same promises as all the

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Old Testament saints had. We're waiting for the same thing. And that faith will endure, and we may die in that faith, having never seen the promises, and yet our faith will be strong, because the just live by that faith, and the just die in that faith.

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And so our faith is strong, and it sees us all the way through to the very end. And I don't want you to miss the simplicity of this. Aren't you glad that it says, the righteous shall live by faith, and not the righteous shall live by works, or live by penance, or live by good deeds that they have done, or live by time served off in purgatory?

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It's a beautiful, simple message. The just shall live. Imagine asking, how can a man be made righteous?

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Remember what I talked about earlier? The weight of sin upon us, and the age -old question, how can a man be righteous in the sight of God?

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And here's the answer, the righteous live by faith. That is so much easier than works, acts of penance, good deeds, the merit of other sinners, things that I have to do in righteousness, a weekly ritual that I have to go to, a confession, going to see a priest, atoning for my own sin, pistol -whipping myself because I don't feel good enough each and every week.

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The righteous just live by faith, a belief, and a simple trust, how simple that is.

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And through that belief, we are accredited with righteousness, and this goes all the way through all of our life. Spurgeon said this, he who is ripest and nearest to heaven has no more ground of confidence, than he who but five minutes ago, like the dying thief, received the assurance of his divine pardon.

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The ground of the sinner's acceptance is the first moment of his faith, is the finished work of Christ, and after fifty years of earnest service, that must still be the sole cause of his acceptance with God, and the only rock upon which his soul must dare to build."

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When you're five minutes old in the Lord, if I had asked you, what is your confidence of entering heaven?

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You're five minutes, born again for five minutes, what would you have said? Christ and Christ alone. The only thing, I toss away all of my good works, all of my deeds, all of my hopes of self -righteousness, my faith and trust rests in Christ, so much so that He must fail for me to perish, and He cannot fail, therefore

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I cannot perish, but it's Christ and Christ alone. And then I fast forward fifty or sixty years to the end of your life, and you're lying in your deathbed, and I say to you, what is your confidence and your hope for entering into heaven?

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The righteous will always say, it's still Christ and Christ alone, because at no point do we ever in our lives say of ourselves, five minutes into the

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Lord, I would have said that it's Christ and Christ alone. But now, here I am, twenty -five, thirty years old, or twenty -five, thirty years in, and I've done a lot of stuff for the

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Lord. I mean, I pastored a church, or I wrote books, or I taught Sunday school, or I worked at a soup kitchen, or I preached open air, or I worked at an adventure club, and so I've done a lot of things now.

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I mean, back then I would have said it's faith, but now the Lord has to look at all the things that I've done and say, you know, you've done a lot of good with the faith that I gave you at the very beginning.

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No, for the seasoned saint, whether five years old in the Lord or fifty years old, the seasoned saint at fifty years old in the

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Lord has to say, it is Christ and Christ alone that is the hope of my salvation. It's the same for all of us.

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The dying saint who's been a believer for seventy years, and the freshly born again saint who's been a believer for seventy seconds, it is the same hope.

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It is faith that marks the true believer. Verse thirty -nine, it is faith that keeps us as well. Verse thirty -nine, we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

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It's a great summary verse for this warning passage that started back in verse twenty -six. It's a summary because it warns those who would shrink back to destruction, those who would go on sinning after receiving a knowledge of the truth.

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It warns them and reminds them that there is a fiery judgment, a fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries, and that it is a fearful thing, verse thirty -two or thirty -one, to fall into the hands of the living

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God. So here's the warning again. We are not of those who shrink back to destruction. There is a destruction. But instead, we are of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul, and this introduces us to the subject of faith, which is going to carry us through Hebrews chapter eleven.

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Notice that there are two groups that are mentioned, those who shrink back and those who continue on. Those are just the two groups, those who shrink back and those who continue on.

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What would cause someone to shrink back? Well, the great conflict of hostilities that he mentions in verse thirty -five would do that, wouldn't it?

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You face this great conflict of hostilities and opposition from friends and families and neighbors. You have endured this reproach of Christ and the great tribulation and had your property seized and been imprisoned and had to visit those who were in prison.

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Any of those things would have caused somebody to shrink back and to say, no, I understand that there was a cost involved, but now that I see the cost played out in real life,

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I'm not interested in that whatsoever. And who are those who continue on to the persevering of the soul or the preserving of the soul?

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Those are those who have faith. They have faith to the preservation of their soul.

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Their faith endures all the way to the end. So this shrinking back is not describing someone who had true and genuine faith and then fell away.

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How do I know that? Because those who have true and genuine faith have faith to the preserving of the soul.

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So this doesn't describe somebody who has genuine faith and falls away to destruction. It describes those who, verse thirty -nine, who may have had a profession of faith, an appearance of faith, who hung around the fringes of Christianity for a period of time.

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Because you see, when there are no costs to discipleship and there's no cost to being a Christian, all of the heretics, the false teachers, the wolves, and the professors of faith in Christ, they all hang around the fringes of Christianity and sometimes even get in and insinuate themselves into the assembly.

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But once faithfulness becomes costly and expensive, then all of the frauds and the phonies and the fakes, they all say,

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I'm not up for that game. That's more cost than I'm willing to bear. I can go back somewhere else and not have to face any of that conflict of suffering.

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So there are two groups, those who shrink back to destruction and those who continue on to the preserving of the soul.

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You know what persecution does? It sifts those two groups. That's what persecution does.

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If we had real persecution in this country, Joel Osteen's church next week would be shut down.

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There might be four brand new Christians who would show up and say, hey, where'd everybody go? Did the rapture happen, that thing that I heard about or read about on Christian radio?

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Did the rapture happen? Oh no, it wasn't a rapture. It was called persecution. Because all of a sudden everybody would realize the cost of this is too much to bear and I'm not willing.

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I mean, I got a picture of Joel on my book at home. I can just go home and look at his smiling face.

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I don't need to come here and see his smiling face. So I can be at home where it costs me nothing. Persecution sifts these two groups of people.

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It shows who it is who has faith to the preserving of the soul and who it is that is going to shrink back. And there is no third group.

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There's no group of people, you'll notice in the text, there's no group of people who had faith and then shrank back to destruction or who had faith and then were thrown into destruction because they committed some sin once too often or they committed some unforgivable sin.

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There's no third group of people. There are those who shrink away from a profession of faith when the hostility comes and they shrink away to destruction and then there are those who continue on to the preservation of the soul.

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Those are the two groups. The destruction that is described here, the word used for destruction means eternal perdition or ruin, eternal destruction.

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Choose that way in scripture. Matthew chapter 7 verse 13, Jesus said, enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction and there are many who enter through it.

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Romans 9, 22, what if God were willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known and endure with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

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Philippians 1, 28, be in no way alarmed by your opponents which is a sign of destruction for them but of salvation for you and that too from God.

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The contrast there between salvation and destruction. This is the word that is used. It's not describing the discipline of a believer, it's not describing a believer going through difficult times or trials or suffering for the sake of purging us and sanctifying us.

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This is describing eternal destruction. It is the same kind of language that is used here in verse 39 that was used in verse 27, the terrifying expectation of judgment.

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Verse 27, the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Verse 28, dying without mercy. Verse 29, severe punishment.

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Verse 30, vengeance is mine, I will repay. Verse 30, the Lord will judge his people. Verse 31, it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living

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God. The author is using those descriptions again. He's returning back to that same theme. He says to them, you are not of those who shrink back to destruction.

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You are not of those who back away or walk away from the faith to destruction like the apostate. Instead, he says, you are of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

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The author is fairly confident that most of his readers, although there may be some of them there who would shrink back, whom this persecution that they were facing would filter them out.

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The author is fairly confident that most of those to whom he is writing were genuine believers. So he expresses the same thing here that he does in the previous warning passage in chapter 6, when after going through the description of the judgment that would befall the apostate, he says, but we are convinced of better things concerning you, things that accompany salvation.

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And after warning everybody, this is what happens to apostates, he then backs up a little bit and says, but I'm convinced concerning the majority of you, that you're not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

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Again, there are two groups, those who have faith and those who do not. There are two actions, shrinking back and continuing on, and there are two results, destruction and salvation or the preserving of the soul.

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And the word preserving there is a word that means to keep or possess or to obtain something. You don't lose it. We do not lose our soul to eternal judgment, because we have faith to the preserving of the keeping, the obtaining of it.

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And so we're not like those who gain the whole world and lose our soul, we're not like those who gain comfort and convenience and lose our soul, we're not of those who shrink back and lose our soul.

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We are of those who have faith, we possess faith, all the way through to the preserving, the keeping of our soul. And listen, biblical, true, genuine,

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God -given faith must result in salvation. It must. And the reason it must is because the gift of faith is a divine gift that God grants to us.

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It is not something that is of a human making, it's not a human activity. We don't conjure up the faith to believe from within us.

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It's not something that is deep residing in the heart of wicked and sinful men. It is something that God grants to those to whom

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He also grants the gift of repentance. That is why in Ephesians chapter 2, Paul says, it is by grace you have been saved through faith and that, that is the faith, is not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works so that no one can boast.

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There's nobody here who can distinguish themselves from an unbeliever by saying, well, I have one thing of which I can boast, the faith that I believed with.

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No, Paul says, that's a gift from God. For to you it has been granted not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for His sake.

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You see, these are the two great gifts that God gives to His elect, belief and suffering. Yeah, I kind of want the first one,

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I'm not so sure about the second one. No, no, to you it has been granted. Just as God has given the gift of suffering to us,

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He's also given us the ability to believe. It is a gift from God, it is not of human works so that we cannot boast.

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And since it is God's gift, it is also God's means of preserving us. It is through that same gift of faith that we are preserved, we are kept.

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First Peter chapter 1 verse 5, and this is what Dave is going to steal next week when he preaches. We are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

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We are protected by the power of God through faith. We are not protected from losing our reward, we are not protected and we are not kept and we are not preserved by human activity, human work, human endeavor, human will, human faith, none of that.

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We are protected by the power of God, how? Through faith. What faith? The faith that God gave to you so that you would believe.

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Now listen, God does not do your believing for you, He does not do your believing for you. But you cannot believe anything without His grace or enablement.

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We are entirely dependent upon Him for the gift of repentance, the gift of belief and faith, the gift of regeneration, the gift of justification, we depend upon Him for all of that.

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But God does not do your believing for you. If you are outside of Jesus Christ, you yourself must repent and turn from your sin and believe upon the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That is His command to you. He is not going to believe on your behalf, but you better call out to God because you cannot believe any of the gospel message apart from His grace.

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So you need His grace to do that. And it is through that gift of faith, it is through that work of faith that God gives to us and that divine enablement, that divine ability to believe, it is through that faith and as a means of that faith and the power of God coupled with that faith that He preserves and keeps

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His people all the way to the very end. So that that faith can never waver, that faith can never go away, it can never be extinguished, no trial, no tribulation, no temptation, no conflict of suffering can ever do away with it.

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Why? Because it is not my faith. And if it were only human faith, it would have perished and fizzled up a long time ago.

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But that faith, no matter what the trial is, that faith endures because it is a gift from God and He keeps His people through that gift of faith.

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How is it that God preserves His elect, saves them and sanctifies them and secures them and keeps them all the way to the very end?

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How is it that God can guarantee the outcome of my salvation? He can guarantee the outcome of my salvation because He is the one who gave me that faith and He is the one who works through that faith in His power to preserve and keep us.

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So since that faith is not of human origin, there's nothing that humans can do to extinguish that faith. So it will be kept and it will persevere all the way to the end, which is why

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Paul said, I'm confident in this very thing that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. How could he say that?

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How could Paul say, I know for certain that God will complete the work He began in you? Because God doesn't stop

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His work. God doesn't start saving you and then say, you know, I'm 30 years into this, but I'm kind of tired of Him.

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I'm going to move on to some other project. That's not how God works. Paul knew that God would complete what

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He began because God always finishes what He starts. God is always successful in what He endeavors to do and He always accomplishes

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His purposes because there is no power in heaven or on earth that can thwart the purposes of God.

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So if He has intended to save you, if He has purpose to do that, and He has given, granted you repentance and turned you from your sin and given you faith to believe,

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He will preserve you and keep you through that faith so that it will never fail. So you ask yourself, what if I were to, what if persecution were to come to this country and I were asked to suffer in some horrible way for my faith, would

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I be able to endure? I can say to you right now, I have absolute confidence that I would.

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You say, that sounds really arrogant. No. If I said I would because I'm that full of faith,

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I'm that great of a faither, I've got so much faith, I've got abundant faith, I come up with that faith, I just renew it every morning,

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I get up every morning, think to yourself, think to myself, Jim, just dig down deep and dig up some more faith and add that to the faith you had yesterday, just keep on faithing on, buddy.

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That's not the basis of my confidence. My confidence is that I know that the faith that He has given, the gift that He has granted, the power by which

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He keeps us cannot fail. And if the power by which He keeps us cannot fail, then my salvation cannot fail and that faith cannot fail.

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We can only say yes to that if we're looking entirely to Him to keep us through that tribulation, to keep us through the great conflict of suffering.

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Because He cannot fail, that faith cannot fail. Now does that mean that I have the faith right now in this moment to be burned at the stake?

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No, because there's no fire up here. If there were fire up here, then God would grant me the faith at that moment to endure what

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He has called me to endure at that moment. But God does not give me the grace or the strength or the faith ahead of the deal.

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He gives it to you at the moment that you need it. So He will keep me, He will preserve you,

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He will keep you all the way to the end if you are the just one, because the just live by that faith.

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And God keeps His just ones through that gift of faith. If you do not have that faith, then you are not just and you are not righteous in His sight, and you have a sin debt for which

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God will pour out His wrath on you for all of eternity if you do not repent and believe on the good news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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That faith endures, and friends, we may even die in faith without receiving the promises, but we still die in faith, because the nature of that faith is that it carries us through all the way to death.

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One last quote from Spurgeon, with this I close. Spurgeon said this, let us then pluck up courage.

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Let there be no standing still, no lingering with chill reluctance, no shivering on the brink with timorous fear.

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Your captain waves his hand and bids you advance. Go on, trembler, go on. For there is goodness and there is mercy prepared to go before you and to follow after you all the days of your life.

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Yes, even when you come to the very brink of death, then, even then, it will be a blessed thing to play the man by faith, to gather up one's feet in the bed, to compose oneself to deliver the last testimony, and without so much as a sign of trepidation or a thrill of fear, to pass the iron gate, conscious that Jesus will come to meet and crown with glory the

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Spirit who has trusted in Him, close quote. That is what it means to die in faith. Let's bow our heads.

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Our Father, we thank you that you grant us not only the faith to believe, but that you keep us through that faith. We thank you that you have not asked us to conjure up our own faith or to make ourselves righteous before we were accepted by you, but entirely upon the basis of what

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Christ has done. In that, we rejoice. We cannot thank you enough that you are just, and because you are just, you will never punish us who are in Christ for our sin.

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We thank you for that salvation and that promise, because all of the wrath for our sin has been satisfied on the cross, we are able to rejoice and exult in God our

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Savior, knowing as Paul does that we, having been justified by grace through faith, that we have peace with you, and we have that confidence that we will be counted and credited with righteousness in Jesus Christ, by Jesus Christ, because of all that He has done.

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We thank you for granting us all of our salvation, not just the justification, but the election that preceded it back in eternity past, the grace to repent, the grace to believe, for changing our hearts, for changing our nature, for drawing us to your

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Son, for opening our eyes, that we may see Christ and behold His beauty and His glory, and be drawn to Him.

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We are grateful for all of that work. We credit it all to you, our great and triune God. We thank you, Father, for our election.

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We thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for coming to die for us, to shed your blood, so that we may have eternal life, and we thank you,

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Holy Spirit, for regenerating us at the proper time. We give you our praise, oh blessed triune