Draw Near

Good morning.

Welcome to this part of our service. I'm glad that each of you are here this morning. The title of my message is "Draw Near," and we're going to be studying from the book of Hebrews, chapter 10.

And you can turn there a while. And as most of you know, we've been working I've been working through the book of Hebrews, and I think that this passage that we're going to study this morning is sort of the climax of the book of Hebrews. Some of you may disagree with me and feel that chapter 11 is the climax, but I would argue that he's been working for the past 10 chapters to build up to this point, and that after this, he sort of changes themes of his book a little bit. And this is going to sort of bring together, I think, everything that we've studied up till now. And I find this passage very exciting, and I'm looking forward to sharing on it.

And I just want to well, I'm going to read the first verse that we're going to study, Hebrews 10:19. I'm going to read from the New English translation this morning, but I don't think you'll have any trouble following along in whatever Bible you have. Verse 19 begins with, "Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus."

And we all know that when we see "therefore," it's connecting this thought with what he said the writer has said before. And so I just since I feel like we've been building up to this, I'm just going to give a brief review of some of the highlights, some of the things that lead up to this. And he talks we'll read the passage in just a minute, but he talks about being able to enter because of what Jesus has done. Jesus has opened a way into the holy place, into the sanctuary. And some of the things that the Hebrew writer has brought out in the book so far, he talks about how Jesus has shared our humanity.

And that was a qualification for him to open this way.

You know, because Jesus has been human, he can identify with everything that we have faced. Before Jesus came, people could throw back up into God's face, "Well, you really don't understand what I'm going through." We can't do that anymore because he felt the things that we feel. He experienced the emotions that we've experienced. He's been tempted like we have been. He's participated fully in the human experience. He even died like we probably all will unless the Lord returns first.

And that was a qualification for him to open the way. He was faithful, faithful as God's Son. He's a high priest who has passed through the heavens, high priest of a better covenant. And we talked about that even, I think, last time. Christ entered the tabernacle and the heavens with his own blood to make atonement for us. He's the mediator of a new covenant who stands between God and us and mediates to this covenant. And then last time we studied about how he came to do God's will. And I'm just going to refresh your mind about the covenant, which is right before the passage that we are starting in today.

In chapter 10:16, he says, "This is the covenant that I will establish with them after those days," says the Lord, "I will put my laws on their hearts, and I will inscribe them on their minds." And then he says, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no longer."

And that's a very special covenant.

And we talked about how that is conversion, actually, when God writes his laws on your heart and in your mind, and God's laws become part of who you are. It actually can become part of your character. It modifies the way that you think. And then he doesn't remember our sins anymore. And so in the backdrop of this, we come to this passage, which I'm going to read now. I'm going to read from 19 to verse 25. "Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the fresh and living way that he inaugurated for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart and the assurance that faith brings, because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

And let us hold unwaveringly to the hope that we confess, for the one who made the promise is trustworthy. And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and even more so because you see the day drawing near."

And I have picked several key words from this passage, and sort of I'm going to talk about them each in turn. And the first word I want to talk about is boldness. And a definition of boldness is free and fearless confidence, cheerful courage, boldness, assurance. And I put down, "Do it without hesitation." And in our Sunday school, we had an example of that. Peter was bold. He said, "I'm going to come out of the boat and walk on the water to you, Jesus." He didn't hesitate. He just went and did it.

And just a little illustration of that, my youngest daughter is four, and she doesn't generally sleep through the night. And when she wakes up at night, she just comes right into my wife and I's room and climbs right into bed with us. She doesn't knock on the door or say, "Can I come in and be with you?" She just plows right in, and we wake up in the morning, and there she is.

That's boldness. And in a certain sense, because of what Jesus has done, we can enter into God's presence in the same way without hesitation.

You know, when Jesus died, the curtain that was inside the temple that cut off the most holy place from the rest of the world, an unseen hand tore that thing from the top to the bottom. And that was a sign that there's access to God. You don't have to have somebody come and do it for you. You don't go and confess to the priest, and he confesses to God anymore. We've got access right into the holy place. And our passage today is encouraging us to enter with boldness. We don't need to hesitate.

And that's a really special thing.

And the way in is by the blood of Jesus. He went in and made atonement for us. And Peter tells us that the blood of Jesus is more precious than gold.

And so we can go in without terror, which is something the Old Testament priest couldn't do. It's legend. I don't know if we can establish it as fact, but it's legend that they went in with a rope tied around their foot.

And if something would happen in there and God would strike them dead, the people could pull them back out because they wouldn't want to go in. I don't know that that's true or not, but it's legendary. Seems like something you would do if you were pretty scared to go in and something bad was going to happen. And we see in the New Testament when Zacharias was in there and the angel met him, and he was in there way longer than he should have been, and the people were getting worried about him. Did something happen to Zacharias in the holy place?

But we don't need to have that fear anymore. We don't need to tie the rope around so someone can pull us out. And we don't enter alone either. Jesus is there too.

And it talks in the next verse about a new and living way. It's a path that never gets old or worn out. His blood is always ready to cleanse our sins, and it's the way that he went through. We're going to go through the same way as he did into that holy place.

So that's boldness. And now I want to talk a little bit about assurance. And before we get there, I guess I'm going to talk a little bit about drawing near. You know, today we have all this remote access. I can put the right thing on my computer, and I could stand up here and control it at my house right here.

And these thermostats back here, sometimes we turn up the temperature, turn it down remotely. We don't have to be here to make it happen.

And now you can get a robotic surgery, and maybe the surgeon that's driving that robot's in Australia.

Remote.

But you can't draw near and do it remotely, can you? The guy that's performing your surgery from Australia can't be by your bedside. If something goes wrong, he can't really help you. Someone that's in Chambersburg or Carlisle is going to have to help you because they can draw near. And so we can't enter this holy place remotely either.

It's not possible. And so he commands us to draw near.

We're going to go right in ourselves, not going to do it by proxy or something like that. And then I want to talk about assurance. And assurance is a most certain confidence, being certain in the mind, confidence of mind or manner, easy freedom from self-doubt or uncertainty, something that inspires or tends to inspire confidence.

And so I think of assurance as a calm, steady confidence that doesn't make a lot of noise. This is in contrast to boldness, where you stomp in and make it happen. The fur's going to fly maybe when someone's bold. But when someone has assurance, it's just got this staying power that you're going to be assured today and tomorrow and next week and next year.

And often we couple that word with assurance of salvation, which is what happens when we rest in the fact that we have done our part, and we can have the confidence that if we do our part, God will do his. And he says, "If you confess with your mouth, he's faithful and just." And so for me, that was sort of where I had to come to, to get assurance of salvation.

And if someone's here struggling today, you can have the assurance that if you have come to God and you've confessed and repented, he's going to do his part. And it's just this calm and steady confidence. And he's talking about the assurance that faith brings, or a full assurance of the faith. And what is faith then? And I just made my own definition up on that. Faith is taking as fact the things that we can't see based on the overwhelming evidence of the things that we can see.

And we'll talk more about that in the next chapter. But that's how we have faith. We can see that there's a world here, and we can have faith that it's been created because it's the only explanation that the evidence allows for.

And we can move on into spiritual, more spiritual things in the same way. The evidence that we see in the Bible and people's testimonies gives us the certainty that the other things are true. And then he talks about having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. And he's bringing back this Old Testament imagery.

When the priest made a sacrifice, he sprinkled the blood. When he went into the holy place, he sprinkled the blood. And we need our hearts to be sprinkled with the blood. And then that takes care of this evil conscience.

You know, we have a conscience naturally that reminds us about good and bad. When you're born, I don't know what age you start to get a conscience, but it's actually fairly young, I think.

But sometimes our conscience gets a little bit confused, and it doesn't always say what's right and wrong. It generally does. But we can sort of twist our conscience if we are bad long enough. And when our heart gets sprinkled, it renews that conscience, and it makes it right again so that it helps us know what's right and wrong.

And then he talks about our bodies being washed with pure water. And remember the priests, they would take a bath before they went in and did their duties. That was a big deal. They had this ritual bath. And Solomon made that enormous sea for the priest to do that in. It had so much bronze in it that they gave up trying to weigh it and figure out how much they put in. It was huge.

And so there's some discussion about what that means, to have our bodies washed with pure water. Some people feel that's baptism. I'm not going to say that it isn't. I think that's probably part of it, but I think it's more than baptism. I think it's, you know, a conscious decision to turn from the world and allow God's Word to wash that filth away out of our hearts, out of our lives, so that we can be pure. And once we have that, then we can draw near. There isn't anything between us and God anymore. We can draw near, and we can enjoy worshiping uninhibited right in God's presence. We can, you know, Jesus talked about how we're going to pray directly to the Father and make our petitions known.

And that's what I see happening in this experience. We're going in, in Jesus' name, we can have this relationship directly with the Father.

And you know, that used to be something that no one could imagine happening, but the New Covenant brought it about. And I just want to encourage us to avail ourselves of this often.

We were talking about self-care a little bit in Sunday school, and I was thinking about Jesus' self-care program. And it was these all-night prayer meetings because that was the only time he could find when people would leave him alone. But you know, his battles were won in those prayer meetings. And I think if you would study the Gospel, you would find out that often before some big thing came up, like when he was choosing his disciples, he prayed all night, I think.

And of course, before when Jesus went to Gethsemane, that was where the battle on the cross was won. It wasn't won on the cross. It was won in Gethsemane.

And we can win our battles by taking refuge in this holy place.

That's where our battles are won and lost too, I think, in the main.

Okay, so now I want to talk about a word that I'm really excited about, and that's the word hope.

And I think that we can tend to minimize hope and get hope lost in some of the other terms that we think about. You know, love is the Corinthians 13 says, "Love is the thing that endures. Hope is going to be realized, and faith is we're going to see." So we won't need those things. But hope is so important. Well, what is hope? You know, I like definitions, so I try to come up with these definitions. To desire with the expectation of obtainment or fulfillment. To expect with confidence. So when we hope, I mean, sometimes we say, "Well, I hope that whatever it is is going to happen." And we use it a little bit frivolously.

But if you really hope that something is going to happen, you sort of expect it. It's not just, "Well, maybe it will and maybe it won't." But you know, we have hope that the sun will come up tomorrow.

And even if it's cloudy and we can't see it, if tomorrow comes, the sun will be up. And that's sort of the kind of thing that we're talking about. Well, what is our hope? He says, "Let us hold unwaveringly to the hope that we confess."

As Christians, our hope is in the resurrection, in the fact that there is life beyond the grave. We believe that death is not the end of the story, but in fact, it's just the beginning. And our hope is based on the fact that God is faithful.

He will do what he has said that he will do. And the last part of the verse brings that out, "For he who promised is faithful." And we've talked about hope, some in Hebrews, and I'm just going to read part of what Hebrews has to say about hope from Hebrews chapter six. I'll read from 13 to 20. "Now when God made his promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, 'Surely I will bless you greatly and multiply your descendants abundantly.' And so by persevering, Abraham inherited the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and the oath serves as a confirmation to end all dispute. In the same way, God wanted to demonstrate more clearly to the heirs of promise that his purpose was unchangeable, and so he intervened with an oath, so that we who have found refuge in him might find strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us through two unchangeable things.

Since it is impossible for God to lie, we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, which reaches inside behind the curtain, where Jesus, our forerunner, entered on our behalf since he became a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek."

So the writer of Hebrews' hope was very important. And to God, it's very important because God went out of his way in dealing with Abraham. He didn't just make him a promise. He swore to it. And it says the reason he did that is because he wanted to demonstrate more clearly to the heirs of the promise, which is us even now today. We are heirs of the promise that his purpose was unchangeable. And so he says, "By two unchangeable things, since it's impossible for God to lie." So God can't lie. That's the first thing. And the second thing is he swore by the greatest thing that he could find, which was himself.

And because of that, if we've found refuge in God, we have strong encouragement to hold fast. Well, why do we need to why do we need to hold on tight? When things get rough, it's easy to become discouraged. We need to purpose before we get to this point that we are going to hold fast. You know, if a mountain climber waits until he's falling to tie onto the rope, it's too late. He's not going to have time. He's going to fall because he didn't hold fast. So we need to be prepared. We need to be prepared.

And this hope is very strong. It's the hope that gave Paul the strength to endure the hardship that he encountered in his missionary journeys and in his dealing with the Jews. It was because he had a hope that was anchored in what's eternal. He talks about this hope is anchored inside the curtain, in the sanctuary of God, anchored to God's throne, if you please.

It can't move. You know, an anchor is only as good as what it's fastened to. And this anchor is fastened to something that's eternal, that can't move. It can't be shaken, can't be destroyed.

And one of my favorite passages is in Lamentations. And I've read this before when I've talked about hope. But Lamentations 3:19 to 24 says, "Remember my affliction and my bitterness, the wormwood and the gall. My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me." So when we think about our situation, especially when things have gotten rough and we've tasted the wormwood and the gall, it's discouraging.

But Jeremiah says, "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I will hope in him."

And it's just incredible to think that God's mercies are never going to come to an end. And that really strengthens my hope. And God is faithful, as we said earlier. He always does what he says he will do.

And so this hope is what gives us the courage to persevere when things get rough. It's what it made possible for the early Christians to face the lions in the arena. You wouldn't do that unless you were absolutely sure that what you believed in was so.

And this hope took the Anabaptists through torture and burning at the stake. They did horrible things to these people, and they sang on their way to the place of execution.

It's almost incomprehensible, but that is what hope will do when you have your hope anchored in the right place. It doesn't matter what we face. And this hope will see us through the pitfalls of individualism, materialism, and all the other isms that our culture is throwing at us today.

We're not worried so much about burning at the stake, but we need to be holding fast to this hope because we do face adversity.

And that brings us to the second portion, the second part of this passage. And I think this is really interesting how this comes in here. After we've entered and we've taken hold on this hope and our confidence, he says, "And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works. Not abandoning our own meetings as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other even more so as you see the day drawing near."

So this word stir up, or I think the I think the Old King James says, provoke. Provoke. It's a very strong word. And if you can provoke somebody, you can really make something happen.

It's a very strong word that means violent anger or passion. The other place that it's used is in Acts 15 to describe the conflict between Paul and Barnabas. That was a sh it says it was sharp. And so we're not if you go to stir somebody up, we're not beating around the bush and making people gas. Well, what does he mean?

It's a strong encouragement. And I don't know. I don't know what some ways are to actually do that. I wish that I had a little bit better handle on what the best way to do that is. He talks about considering each other. And so we're sort of that word means to consider attentively to fix one's eyes or mind upon. We need to study each other to see the weaknesses that we have and try to address them. And I think probably we need to encourage each other. We see that you're coming up short over here, and this is a way to get you to spring into action.

And along with that, he says, "We're not going to abandon our own meetings." And so this word isn't actually in the text, but I am using the word assembly. And you know, as important as it is to enter into the holy place individually, and that was what he was talking about before, individually, it's perhaps more important to enter collectively.

And I really want to emphasize that this morning. It's very telling that this teaching about the gathered body comes into this context. Right along with this hope and this entrance, he says, we need to assemble. We need to go in together into the holy place.

Lynn Martin wrote, "We believe that the greatest power on earth is in the gathered body of Christ, his church. The church is a Christ to the world and will perform in similar ways as he did and would if he were here presently. This is impossible to experience individually."

You can't experience that individually. If you are only going into the holy place by yourself, you're missing out. You're missing out. Paul's favorite analogy of the church is a body. And if the only thing we have is a hand, it's not very much useful by itself because you can't even close up your hand unless you have your forearm and even this part of your arm because that's where the muscles are that make it work.

So we need a body, and we need to experience this entrance together. I was thinking about the song that we sing, "I Love Thy Kingdom," and

it's one of my favorite songs.

But are we excited about this gathered assembly? Are we excited about that? In this song, we make some commitments. We say, "I love Thy kingdom, Lord. The house of Thine abode. The church, our blessed Redeemer, saved with his own precious blood. I love Thy church, O God. Her walls before Thee stand, dear, as the apple of Thine eye, engraven on Thy hand." And I want to turn that around a little bit. Is the church the apple of Your eye?

Are the things that matter to the church written on Your hand where You see them all the time? The church. I mean, that's how God views the church. That's how God views us. And so then, "For her my tears shall fall. For her my prayers ascend. To her my cares and toils be given till toils and cares shall end."

Are you willing to give to make this assembly work? You're going to shed tears for the gathered body that you're part of. You're going to spend time praying for your brothers and sisters. You're going to work till toils and cares shall end. And then, "Beyond my highest joy, I prize her heavenly ways, her sweet communion, solemn vows, her hymns of love and praise."

When you think about the things that you prize the best, does something about the church come up there in your heart? Or is it something else that you're giving your toils and cares to? Is there something else that takes place of the sweet communion, as he's saying here? "Sure, as Thy truth shall last, to Zion shall be given the brightest glories earth can yield and brighter bliss of heaven. I love Thy kingdom, Lord."

And I'm going to get practical here. He says, "We aren't going to abandon the assembling of ourselves." So what priority do we place on being part of this gathering? You know, many of you are very faithful in your attendance. When we have a service, generally you're here. And I want to commend you on that. That's good. Congratulations.

You're in a good situation. Some of you, I would like to spur on to more regular attendance and also to becoming part of a local body. I think that our willingness to join and submit to each other speaks volumes to our children, and as does joining the gatherings regularly. And you have to decide, what are my priorities? If the fullness of Christ is only present in the gathered body, do you want to experience that? You have to get together to do that.

You need to be part of a local body so that that admonition and encouragement, that provoking it's a little bit hard to provoke people who aren't committed to the group that I'm part of. I think we can, but we haven't don't have that loyalty, and you're not sure, you know, how are they going to take this? And so I just really want to encourage you. Make the church a priority, a high priority.

And something that I've found really helpful with church attendance is we plan or we assume that we're going to be at church. Tonight, I'm planning to be there at 6:15 for communion, and I'm planning in 10 days or so to be here at 7:30 for prayer meeting. That's the plan. It could change if some emergency comes up. But if you've planned ahead, we're not going to schedule something here because this is church and this is important. And if your neighbor comes over and says, "The pipe broke in my basement," you know, at 6:00, right before you're ready to go, you get a knock on the door and the neighbor's saying, "Well, the pipe broke in my basement and it flooded.

Can you come help me?" It's pretty easy to put your work clothes back on and run over. But it's a lot harder at 7:00 to all of a sudden get everybody cleaned up and get to church on time.

It's just hard to do that. And so I want to encourage you. Assume, plan that you're going to come to the assembly. And then he talks about encouraging, encouraging each other and even more because you see the day drawing near. And encourage means to inspire with courage, spirit, or hope, hearten, to attempt to persuade, to urge, to spur on, to stimulate.

And so those are some of the same things that we've been talking about in the in the earlier part of the passage.

And don't back off because you've gotten tired of it. Do it more because we see the day coming. The day is coming.

And so let's not get tired of encouraging each other, but let's spur each other on. And the writer indicates that this is an anecdote to Apostasy. And I'm just going to read from 26 to the end of the chapter. I'm not going to say a lot about that, but I'll just make a couple of comments. "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation, which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Oh, how much worse punishment do you suppose?

Will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle with sufferings, partly while you were made a spectacle, both by reproaches and tribulations, and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated. For you had compassion on me in my chains and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and enduring possession for yourselves in heaven.

Therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance so that after you have done the will of God, you may excuse me, you may receive the promise."

So that's sort of sobering. If we sin willfully after we've received the knowledge of the truth, there's no sacrifice for such sins.

You're not going to get into this place by accident. Some people thought that this was directed to the Jews who, while they accepted Christ and his sacrifice for their sins, still wanted to go back to Jerusalem and offer offerings.

I don't know. I don't know how to feel about that. It could be. But it seems to me that he's saying here that you're going to trample the Son of God underfoot and count the blood of the covenant, which I said is more precious than gold, a common thing, an insult to Spirit of grace.

So we're not just talking about someone who has slid back into some sin, but they still feel like, you know, God's blood, Jesus' blood can can cleanse them. We're saying that someone who has they've experienced salvation, they've gone into the presence of God, they've worshiped, and then they've decided to throw it away.

And the blood that was shed to cleanse them is like dirt. You don't get there accidentally. You just don't. You can maybe get there little by little, but I think it's a conscious decision that you're going to make.

And if you've done that, you're in bad trouble, that is for sure. But the writer here says where does he say it now?

He says that we're not those kinds of people. Maybe I was reading a different different translation where it really said that very clearly.

Oh, I didn't read the whole passage. That's why. Yeah. But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul. And so I think you can take comfort in that this morning.

We're not those who draw back. We're going forward. And so I think that's all I'm going to say about that. And next time we'll be looking forward to to chapter 11. In conclusion, let's enter the holy place often with confidence. Let us draw near together, encouraging each other, and let us hold fast to the hope that is our anchor. Let us be faithful as we see the day approaching.

Is there any.