Hebrews 10:19-27
Come to Church
I want to talk to you this morning about something which is the
necessary consequence of hearing and believing the Gospel. This
something is foundational to your health as a believer in Christ. It is
something that God has purposed for all of His people in order to
preserve them, in order to keep them safe and secure for the
eternity that He has prepared for them and for His glory. I want to
talk to you this morning about coming to church. I want to talk to
you about coming to church.
Welcome back if you were away over the long weekend last week.
This morning is part 2 of 2 messages that we are preaching on the
church. So if you missed last week please make use of our website to
listen to the sermon on “what is the church?” It is really important
that you do so. The church is not the physical building we are
meeting in this morning. The church is in fact the living building
which is the people of God. We are the living bricks that make up the
building that God Himself is building. And the extraordinary reality
about this building made up of you and me is that God Himself lives
it. God has been pleased to make for Himself a dwelling in the midst
of His people. It is the most mind-blowing reality. That’s what the
church is.
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So one of the things we heard last week was that it is antithetical to
the purposes of God for each individual living brick to separate itself
from the rest of the other bricks. That’s not what a brick is designed
for. Each individual brick is meant to join together with other bricks
in an indivisible union, isn’t it? That’s when it realises its brick
potential, right?
I am convinced that the seriousness and significance of coming to
church is something that is lost to most of our society today and
even to many professing Christians.
Coming to church has become something that many people
view as old fashioned and backward. This is the 21st century.
We are passed that now. Church going is something for our
grandmothers to do.
Others think of church as that boring place where you are
taught many rules that nobody’s got time for.
But then you get people that think of coming to church as a
good thing, but they just don’t have the time to do it. They
think coming to church gives you upliftment and motivates you
to be a better person. So they think it’s good to pop in to
church every now and again. Someone actually posted on
Facebook the other day, “it was so good to go to church
yesterday. Now I feel so much better”.
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So she’ll come back in a few months’ time when she wants to
feel better again.
Others just visit church and never come back. They simply
decide it’s not for me.
Those are some of the attitudes of people in our society at
large.
But then there are attitudes of people in the church which are
also not great because they don’t recognise the significance of
coming to church.
o There are some Christians who think for example, they
don’t need the church because they can just be with their
God at home. I was recently shown a so-called prophet
who says that the church is a terrible Governmental
institution that you must stay away from. God wants you
to stay at home. Some people think that’s true.
o There are of course professing Christians who know that
coming to church is part of what Christians do so they do
it but they don’t really know its significance so they don’t
see it as a high priority. So they come to church when
they are free on a Sunday morning or when they are free
during the week for midweek meetings. When they have
nothing better to do.
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o Others come regularly but if something comes up then
they drop church and do that thing. And I think a lot of
people who call themselves Christians are tempted to fall
into this category rather than the others ones I’ve just
mentioned.
o So for example, many of you are students. You have a test
on Monday morning, or a weekly assignment that must
be submitted every Monday morning. You don’t plan to
do the assignment in time so you’ll just not come on a
Sunday evening, and you’ll do your assignment during
church time. Exams start at the end of May, so we see you
in April, we don’t see you in May because you are
studying every Sunday night and then in June-July you’re
on holiday so we see you again in August.
o Many of you are working people with all sorts of
pressures and demands from your work and somehow
church tends to find its way to the back of the agenda
because there are lots of other urgent things to do.
Everything I’ve said up until now is evidence of a problem. What’s
the problem? We don’t know and feel the seriousness and
significance of coming to church.
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My aim therefore tonight is not to tell you my thoughts. I want to
show you from Hebrews 10 that coming to church is the necessary
consequence of hearing and believing the Gospel. I want to show you
from Hebrews 10 that coming to church has been purposed by God
as the means by which He preserves His people, the means by which
He keeps them safe and secure for the eternity that He has prepared
for them and for His glory. If you haven’t already done so please turn
in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10:19-27. That is our passage for
this morning.
Let me pray. Father help us this morning by your Spirit. Help us as we
read and hear your Word to re-arrange our lives, to re-arrange our
priorities and line them up with your purposes. We don’t want to be
a people that call themselves by your name but neglect to live by
your ways. I pray that your people at St. James would see and feel
the significance of meeting together this morning and so make it the
habit of highest priority in their lives so that in the end we may see
your face and live. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
If you are unfamiliar with the book of Hebrews this language will
seem very strange to you. Don’t panic. I’m going to explain the gist of
what the writer is saying without going into too much detail today.
There are 3 sections in our passage this morning and I am going to
look at the 1st one and the 3rd one and then come back to the 2nd one.
So let’s have a look at 1 and 3 then.
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1) The first section I want you to notice is the summary of the main
point of the book of Hebrews. It’s the summary of the main point of
the book. Look at v19:
The writer is coming near the end of the book and he is going to
make some conclusions based on what he has written in the book so
far. That is why verse 19 starts with a “therefore” right? A therefore
as you know, indicates that what I’m going to say next is based on
what I’ve said before right? Now we don’t know what the writer said
in the last 9 chapters because we haven’t read them. But thankfully
this is a really intelligent writer because, before he starts telling us
his conclusions and makes some applications, he first summarises
the main point that he’s been making in the last 9 chapters. Are you
with me? But how do I know that? How do I know that he
summarises his main point before he makes his conclusions? Well,
because he follows his “therefore” with the word “since”. Now, I’ve
just confused you haven’t I?
Let me explain with an illustration. If you walk into Jenna’s house in
the middle of a conversation she’s having and she says, “therefore,
since Jed and Jess have done their chores, they can play with their
toys.” What do you think she was talking about before you walked
in? She was talking about the chores they had to do right? That’s
what that “since” tells you and that’s also what the “since” in v19 is
doing here as well. It’s summarising for you what was said before.
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So read with me then the summary of the main point of this book
from v19. “[since] we have confidence to enter the Most Holy
Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us
through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and [since] we have a great
priest over the house of God…” Pause right there. That’s the
summary before he makes his conclusions. That’s basically in a
nutshell what this writer has been trying to get across for 9 chapters.
What does it all mean? Let’s take it step by step: V19 “we have
confidence to enter The Most Holy Place” that’s the presence of God.
It means we have confidence to enter into a direct relationship with
God.
“By the blood of Jesus” means that it’s because of Jesus’ death that
we are able to confidently enter into this relationship with God. V20
“by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is,
his body” That means that when Jesus’ body was crucified on the
cross the curtain that stood in the way between us and God was
removed. V21 “we have a great High Priest over the house of God” A
High Priest is someone who offers a sacrifice to God on behalf of
other people’s sins so that that sacrifice takes away the sins of the
people. Because there’s no forgiveness of sins without the shedding
of blood. So when v21 says that “we have a great High Priest over
the house of God”, it’s talking about the Lord Jesus.
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The writer has spent a lot of time in this book talking about Jesus the
Great High Priest. It means that when Jesus died on the cross, He
was actually acting as a High Priest who was offering the sacrifice of
Himself in order to take away our sins.
If I’ve lost you, here’s the whole thing put together: v19-21 is saying
this: we have confidence to enter into a direct relationship with God
because of Jesus’ death. Because when Jesus’ body was crucified on
the cross, the curtain that stood in the way between us and God was
removed. When Jesus died on the cross, He was actually offering the
sacrifice of Himself in order to take away our sins. That’s the curtain
that stood between us and God, our sins, our offences against a holy
God. But now because of Jesus death for our sins we have
confidence to enter into a relationship with this Holy God. Are you
with me?
And that ladies and gentleman is the most incredible news that you
will ever hear. It is the main point of this book and in fact it is the
main point of the whole Bible. It is what the Bible calls the good
news; the Gospel. It is sweet music in the ears of a sinner like me. It
is the only reason why eternity with God can be a reality for a sinner
like me. Anyone and everyone who believes this news, this Gospel
will be saved from judgement for their sins. It’s the reason why Kyle
and I are in this job. We want to tell you and others and as many
people as we can this very news.
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We want as many people as possible to open the Bible and see for
themselves this great news from God and trust God.
2) That’s the first thing I wanted you to see, this massive main point
of this book. The second thing I want you notice is the 3rd section of
this passage and that’s down at v26-27. So jump down to v26-27
with me. “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received
the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a
scary expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume
the enemies of God”… The second thing is a warning. Can you see
that? I would not be doing my job if I didn’t warn you that there’s a
warning.
The warning is that if after you receive the knowledge of this truth
we just talked about and you still turn around and keep on keeping
on deliberately living the sinful lifestyle you were living, if you
reject this Gospel we just talked about and in your heart you don’t
care that you’ve deeply offended God with your sinful life and you
just go back to it and forget all about the sacrifice of Jesus for your
sins, then there’s nothing else that can be done for you. There’s no
sacrifice left for you because you’ve rejected the only there is...
There’s only the sacrifice of Jesus that’s there for our salvation…
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It’s incredible that we human beings love sin so much, we love
rebelling against God so much that even after someone dies for us as
a sacrifice for our sins so that we can have an everlasting relationship
with God, we can still say, ”No thanks, I’ll go back to my sins”… In
that case then, the writer says, there’s no other sacrifice left for you.
All that is coming your way is a scary expectation of judgment and a
burning fire that’s going to devour God’s opponents V27…
So the second thing is a warning... The first thing is there’s really
good news for all of us brothers and sisters. Really good news. Jesus
sacrificed Himself for our sins so that we can confidently enter the
presence of God. The second thing is the warning that if we reject His
sacrifice and deliberately turn back to our sinful ways then there isn’t
a sacrifice left for us, only a scary expectation of judgement for our
sins and a burning fire that is going to devour God’s opponents.
Now the writer doesn’t leave us there. He doesn’t leave wondering
whether we will be in the presence of God for eternity or we will be
in the raging fires of judgement. He tells us what the logical
conclusion to hearing and believing the Gospel is so that we will not
fall away. He tells us what necessarily follows from hearing and
believing the Gospel so that we will not drift away and be held
captive by sin and then face judgement in the end. How do I know
that tells us the logical conclusion? How do I know that He tells us
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what necessarily follows from hearing and believing the Gospel? Well
he said therefore, didn’t he?
And so we come now to the second section of this passage. We
looked at the 1st section which is the summary of the book, which is
the Gospel and we’ve looked at the 3rd section which is the warning.
And now we’re looking at the writer’s conclusions and applications
for us. He’s told us the good news, he summarised it with that word
“since”. He’s warned us with that word “If”. He’s warned us of what
will happen if we go back to living in sin and now he is going to tell us
how to not drift away, how not to fall back into an unbelieving
lifestyle of sin. This writer wants us to be saved. Remember it’s not
just him writing this passage. It’s God who is ultimately writing this
passage to us. It is God who wants us to be saved. That’s why He
used this writer to tell us the means by which He will preserve us and
keep us safe and secure for the eternity that He has prepared for us.
So have a look at the conclusions and applications then in the middle
of our passage, v22-25: v22 “Therefore, “since we have
confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a
new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his
body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God [now
here it comes] let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with
the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to
cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed
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with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we
profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how
we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25 Let us
not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but
let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day
approaching.
How many “let us-ses” do you see there in your Bible? The first
person to put up their hand and get it right will get a chocolate.
There are 3 let us-ses and some translations have subdivided the last
2 and that’s why some of your Bibles have 5 let us-ses. So you are
both right. We will have a look at the 5 this morning.
Who is the writer addressing? An individual or a community? He’s
addressing a community of Hebrews who have put their trust in
Jesus. That’s is why he says “let us” when gives them applications
that follow logically from the Gospel. These applications are being
made primarily to the body of believers as a whole.
Number 1: v22 “Therefore… let us draw near to God with a sincere
heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our
hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having
our bodies washed with pure water”. Let us draw near to God. Let’s
not hear this Gospel and carry on with life like nothing has
happened. Maybe this morning is the first time that you’ve actually
understood what Jesus is all about.
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The beauty of Jesus is that if you believe in what He has done for
you, that He has sacrificed Himself to remove your sins that stand
between you and God, then now and tomorrow and always you can
come to God not fearing that you are not good enough for Him… you
can come to God not fearing that you will be rejected. That’s why
v22 says “with assurance”. The assurance of faith. Meaning, He has
washed you clean if you believe in His sacrifice and God will never
turn you away. Therefore come to Him knowing that your conscience
has been washed clean by Jesus’ blood. You are acceptable to God
now because of Jesus. So run to Him confidently as a child runs to
her father, assured of His love and acceptance of her… That’s the
logical implication of the Gospel not only to someone who’s never
heard it but to all of us as the believing community. We ought to
draw near to God with assurance that faith in Christ’s sacrifice gives.
The danger of course is that if we don’t draw near to Him then we
forfeit the assurance that faith gives. You see brothers and sisters
when it comes to salvation there’s no neutral ground. It’s either you
are drawing near to God with assurance of faith or you are drifting
away from Him in danger of being engulfed by sin. It’s like being in
the middle of an ocean. If you are not confidently swimming towards
the shore, you will be pulled deeper and deeper by the current. If
you’ve been a believer for any length of time you will know that sin is
always crouching at your door waiting to devour you. God says to us
draw near to me St. James. Coming to church is not merely about
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ticking a box that you’ve done your religious duty for the week. We
come together as a body to talk to God in prayer, we talk to God in
song, we praise Him for His goodness, we fill our minds and hearts
with songs of what He has done for us in Jesus instead of the
nonsense that we consume on the radio. We confess our sins to Him
being assured of His forgiveness. We listen to Him speak through His
word as it is being preached. We get to know more of Him through
His word. We get to be excited by Him through His word and delight
in in Him and all that He is doing in the world when the Bible is read
and preached as we study it in the week. We are not ticking old
fashioned boxes when we meet together. We are drawing near to
God. Draw near to God St. James. The God who dwells in the midst
of His people.
If we are drawing near to God in relationship; always wanting to
know Him more through His word and experience Him more in His
forgiveness and grace and fellowship with Him more in prayer then
we will stand firm and assured in our salvation. That’s the first logical
response to hearing and believing and the Gospel.
Number 2: “Therefore, Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we
profess, for he who promised is faithful”. So long as the devil is in
the world, he will use every single trick in the book to make you
doubt the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Jesus for you, to make you
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doubt that he died for all of your sins, to make you doubt that you
are clean and acceptable to God because of Jesus.
The devil’s goal in life is not to make you poor, or to bring you
hardships and disasters. That’s not his goal. His goal in life is to make
you lose hope in Jesus… because he knows that our hope in Jesus
saves us. He doesn’t want that. He wants you to himself, divorced
from God. He wants you to abandon God and return to your sins so
that you face will the face the fire that devours the enemies of God.
Only our hope in Jesus assures us that our sins are no longer an
obstacle between us and God, no longer a curtain that stands in the
way. Only our hope in Jesus removes the curtain of our sins and
brings us into the presence of God. And God is not going to change
and say take the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins away. No. God is
faithful. He will keep His promise. He will forgive us of our sins
because Christ died for them. God is faithful.
Therefore, don’t wonder away from the community of the people
who hope in Jesus and leave yourself vulnerable to being blown
around by all the false teaching and rubbish that’s out there
distracting you from the Gospel. Don’t swerve. Don’t move from this
hope. What this means in practice is that you have got to
consistently sit under the sound teaching of the Gospel with the
people who believe it. You need to be deeply rooted in the Gospel.
That’s how you won’t drift away from it. You need to keep growing in
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your understanding of it. You need to constantly feed on it. Your
worldview and your aspirations and passions need to be shaped it.
If we continue to hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, then we
will stand firm and assured in our salvation. That is why this service is
filled from top to bottom with the message of the Gospel. We as a
community of believers have to hold on to this hope. That’s the
second logical response to hearing and believing and the Gospel
Number 3: “let us consider how we may spur one another on
toward love and good deeds”. The truth is that brothers and sisters
if you have become a Christian, you have now entered a lifelong war
against the sin that comes from your heart. The sin that desires to
drag into the fiery expectation of God’s judgement. And in this battle
against our sinful hearts we need each another. We need each
other’s friendship. We need each other’s presence. We need each
other’s motivation. We need each other’s example. We need each
other’s encouragement to stay away from sin and to instead spur
one another on toward love and good deeds. That’s why one author
once rightly said, “spiritual life is designed by God to be a community
project”. You cannot survive on you own. If you break away from the
body of Christ, sooner or later sin will enslave you again and in the
end you will receive a DNF. Does anybody know what that is? DNF
stands for Did Not Finish. It comes from the tour de France cycle
race. It’s received by riders who started the race but did not make it
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to the end. I know, as I’m sure you do too, many people who started
out in the Christian walk who are no longer walking with us today.
Did not finish. We need each other so that none of us will receive a
DNF in the end. We need each other.
We need brothers and sisters around us to spur us on in this new life
that God has brought us into. This new life that is characterised by
love and good deeds, not selfishness and bitterness and drunkenness
and lust and all kinds of sin. You know the saying, bad company
corrupts good character? What we are told here is that Christian
company encourages love and good deeds. People influence you one
way or the other whether you like it or not. It’s true. You are not an
island. You are not self-made. And the people that have the most
influence on you are obviously the people that are around you the
most. It means we actually need this fellowship. It’s not just for fun
that we come together. It’s dead serious.
You might not be able to see how this fellowship is influencing you
but over time you will if you are consistently with this body. Meet
with the body of Christ and spur one another on to love and good
deeds guys. If we do that, then we will stand firm and assured in our
salvation. That’s the 3rd logical response to hearing and believing and
the Gospel.
Number 4: “Therefore, Let us not give up meeting together, as some
are in the habit of doing”. Here the writer is spelling it out for us.
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Lots of people are in the habit of abandoning meeting with believers,
abandoning Bible study, abandoning coming to church on Sunday.
They come up with all sorts of reasons like we spoke about earlier…
Don’t give up meeting together...
Meeting together must be your habit! Many obstacles will come your
way in this life. You will be lazy, you’ll think it’s fine if you don’t
come, you will be depressed, you will be busy doing all sorts of
things, friends will want to do stuff with you on Sunday night, there’ll
be a party or something you must go to on Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday or Saturday night. Sin will knock on your door and tempt you
away from church, work and tests, assignments and exams will put
you under pressure. All sorts of things will happen… Don’t give up
meeting together like some are in the habit of doing. If we do that,
then we will stand firm and assured in our salvation. That’s the
fourth logical response to hearing and believing and the Gospel.
Number 5: “therefore, let us encourage one another—and all the
more as you see the Day approaching”.
The great day is coming guys. It’s the great day of judgement. It’s not
something that many people like talking about. It’s not trending on
twitter. It’s not making waves on Facebook. It’s not on your T.V. It’s
not on your NMMU curriculum but it is coming whether you talk
about it or not. We’ve got to live our lives in light of that fact. It’s so
easy to casually go on with our lives like we are going to be here
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forever. The truth is that we are going to die and after that face
judgement. We’ve got to live in light of the end. What that means for
us as Christians, as those drawing near to God, as those who are
holding unswervingly to our hope in Jesus, our hope in His death for
our sins, is that we’ve got to keep encouraging one another.
Encouraging one another to not give up meeting together,
encouraging one another to hold on to our hope, encouraging one
another to kill sin and practice love and good deeds. We cannot
encourage one another and develop relationships with each other if
we fall into the habit of not meeting together. You can’t live the
Christian life as God purposed outside of the body of believers. And
relationships and community take time and effort to develop. If
coming to church is not high on your priority list it will not happen
and that leaves you susceptible to the greatest of all dangers in the
end. Let us encourage one another. If we do that, then we will stand
firm and assured in our salvation. That’s the 5th logical response to
hearing and believing and the Gospel.
Many of you will know a guy by the name of John Stott. Now on one
occasion, he got invited by the Queen to the great palace. After
being there for a while, John Stott said something like this to the
Queen: “Listen, I have to leave now because tomorrow morning I
have a date with the King.”
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Let us pray. Father I pray that as we have read and heard your Word
this morning that by you Spirit you will help us to re-arrange our
lives, to re-arrange our priorities and line them up with your
purposes. We don’t want to be a people that call themselves by your
name but neglect to live by your ways. I pray that your people at St.
James would see and feel the significance of meeting together this
morning and so make it the habit of highest priority in their lives so
that in the end we may see your face and live. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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