Hebrews 10:26-39 - Jesus Is The Only Sacrifice Left

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are continuing our study in Hebrews chapter 10.

And well, it's not just Hebrews chapter 10, it's been all of Hebrews.

But most recently, we've been in chapter 10, looking at Jesus as our perfect, permanent, once and for all sacrifice, what that means for us, how that begins to influence, like what we do and how we do it.

And I'm going to kind of lead us into where we're at today with the end of chapter 10. I'm going to take it from where we were at last time in verse number 19.

That way you can see the full flow of the passage to be able to see this is what the author is telling us in some total.

As we are, as we've been traveling through, we've seen how the author is attempting to bring people back to Jesus, to have a focus on him and a love for him more than any of the elements of the Old Testament or Judaism or the Old Priesthood that they

were being drawn into, that others had abandoned Jesus for. And so now it comes to kind of the most definitive statements in relation to that struggle and that argument and what they've been working through.

So verse number 19, Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, he has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain that is through his flesh and blood.

And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering since he who promised is faithful.

And let us watch out for one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other and all the more as you see the day approaching.

2:23

Warning Against Rejection

For if we deliberately go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire about to consume the adversaries.

He says here in essence, if you choose to abandon Jesus, like there's no sacrifice left for you. It's Jesus or it's nothing.

And you can choose that nothing, but then all that's left for us is the fire of God's judgment, the fire of hell, if you will. That is what awaits those that reject Jesus. Verse number 28.

Anyone who disregarded the law of Moses died without mercy based on the testimony of two or three witnesses. You know, you were killed, you were stoned, you were whatever. If you had committed one of those sins against the law of Moses.

Verse 29. How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, who was regarded as profane, the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and who has insulted the Spirit of Grace?

If you say, Jesus, I don't love you, I don't want you, I think what I had was better than you. If you say the blood that you shed for me, that's not going to cover my sins. This lamb's blood is going to shed, is going to cover my sins.

And if you say, like, you know, the Holy Spirit, the one who's done miracles and wonders and who has made all these people new, like, yeah, I don't really want that Holy Spirit. I just want to go back to what I had before.

He says, what do you think you're going to get if death was the penalty for breaking Moses' law? You are going to get so much of a more severe punishment if you reject Christ.

Verse 30, for we know the one who has said, Vengeance belongs to me, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God.

So, so far throughout all of this, there's been a call, if you will, this is the carrot on the stick in front of you, that this is like an invitation to Christ because he is so much better.

But as through all this time, he's been looking at the love of God, the kindness of Jesus, his sacrifice for us, the invitation, now he's letting us know God is not only love and invitation and kindness, he is also just and holy.

And there is a punishment for sin. There is a punishment for rejection of God's new covenant and his new law in Jesus. And so it's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God that you have rejected.

5:05

Call to Endurance

Verse number 32. He says, Remember the earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, after you knew about Jesus, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.

Sometimes you were publicly exposed to taunts and afflictions, and at other times you were companions of those who were treated that way. He says, You guys didn't enter into this Christianity thing when it was all holly jolly.

It's been difficult for you this entire way through as you've been walking.

Verse number 34, For you sympathized with the prisoners and accepted with joy the confiscation of your possessions, because you know that you yourselves have a better and enduring possession.

He says, People took your stuff because you were Christians, and you were like, Hey, you know, I get to be a Christian, a child of God, and I am happy with that. Verse number 35, So don't throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

He says, You've already gone through like struggles and trials. Like keep on going because what you get at the end of it is God himself. You get all the riches and rewards of his presence and of a life in heaven with Jesus.

All of that is awaiting you. So don't abandon him. Like keep on going.

Don't throw away your confidence in Christ. Verse number 36, For you need endurance. You need to keep on going so that after you've done God's will, you may receive what was promised.

There is no doing God's will that does not result in receiving what he has promised. And certainly, you know, there can be an element that says, okay, well, don't serve God just because of what you can get. And certainly that's true.

We want to do what we do out of love for the Lord. We want to do what we do out of wanting to be a good example to others. We want to do what we do for the Lord because it's right.

But one of the reasons that God tells us, hey, do this because there is a reward. And all of the good reasons that we could possibly have to serve the Lord, God has given us every reason to serve him. He's given us zero reasons not to.

So when we have done God's will, the automatic result is receiving what was promised. It very well might not be in this life. Certainly, it wasn't for these Christians.

But as soon as we pass and when the Lord comes, when we are received back to him, there is a reward. Then he quotes next from... Here, let me look.

Looks like Isaiah 26 and some verses in Habakkuk as well. He quotes here and says the promise is from the Old Testament. This is why you can believe.

Here's why you can endure. Here's why you can have faith in Jesus and continue in that confidently. He says, for yet in a very little while, the coming one will come and not delay, but my righteous one will live by faith.

And if he draws back, I have no pleasure in him. He says, but we are not those who draw back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and are saved.

8:11

Godʼs Character in Trials

I love this passage. It kind of goes against some of our natural inclinations towards just painting God as a God of either just love or just justice or just holiness or just wrath. He is all of those things because he is perfect.

He is the old theological term for it is he has divine simplicity. That is, that he is the full summation of all of his attributes. He's not like 90% love, 10% holiness.

He's 100% love, he's 100% holy, he's 100% just, he's 100% merciful. And all of those attributes, they work together in a way that it just doesn't for us.

Like for us, sinful, flawed, imperfect humans, we very well might be like 50% love and 50% justice or wrath or condemnation. And so we hold these things and you never quite know what you might get with a person.

Like they might one day treat you really kindly even when you mess up. And the very next day, they might go after you and just like berate you. And you might not know, okay, which one am I going to get today?

With God, every interaction with him, we can know like I'm getting God's full love in this moment. And frankly, as I look at the New Testament, we can know in any given moment, like God's justice is being poured out right now.

It is either being poured out in full on Christ on the cross. It might be poured out in full that we don't even necessarily have to wonder like, hey, God, are you going to hate me or punish me more?

Or is this like the full wrath that I'm receiving right now? Am I able to get any more of this wrath poured out on me? We can know in God's divine simplicity that like, okay, whatever God is giving to me, I know is sufficient.

It is what I need because he doesn't exercise any of his attributes. For any other reason than for his glory, which as we would read in Romans 8 and several times in the Psalms, what brings God glory is for our good. It might...

I'll put this in there. Joseph went through tons of trials. Went through trials with his brothers, went through trials with Potiphar's wife, went through trials in the prison and being forgotten, all of those things.

But God used all of those things to mold Joseph into the kind of person that could be forgiving, that could be righteous, that could be holy, that could be intelligent and have wisdom through everything that he encountered. And it brought God glory.

And it brought Joseph good. And so when we're going through things that we can know like, okay, this God who is a terrifying, living God, the one who is holy and is just, whatever he does in my life is going to make me a better person.

It is going to mold me into the image of Jesus Christ, that I'm going to look more like my Savior.

And I will be able to tell other people, hey, follow God because he is good, because he is glorious, because he taught me this, because he grew me in this scenario.

And I think that's a really important thing that we need to remember and we need to have a focus on.

If we think that God does not or should not ever bring justice or trials our way, then we are, number one, forgetting the fact that God isn't just like piecemealed together. He's a hundred percent of all of his attributes.

And so we can say, OK, well, I know the God who purifies. I know the God who is just. He is going to shape me.

He's going to correct sin in my life. He's going to weed out the portions of me that believe in things other than him. He's going to shave off the things in my life where I'm building up idols or where I have a lack of faith.

All of this is just. It's going to be done in my life.

And if I have that expectation, and I also know God is going to do all of this to grow me, that I'm going to live by faith, as Hebrews 10 and verse 38 there says, as I'm living my life by faith, that I can go through the trials, I can have endurance,

I can continue my walk with joy, I cannot give up on the Lord, but continue with Him, because I know, okay, I know God is going to change me, I know I'm going to endure hard times, but it's going to be so that He can be glorified, and it's going to

be for my good. I'm going to look more like Jesus, I'm going to be able to tell the story of how God saved me, how He heard me, heard my cry. There's a version of the song, Blessed Assurance, that the group of siblings, Cain, has recorded, and the

church that I was at on Sunday, they sang through it. And it's all the verses and chorus of Blessed Assurance. And then there's a bridge of this is my story. I'll testify that God is good all the time.

He saw me and heard my cry. Now I am His and He is mine. And just that encouragement with that song, with this passage of saying go through the hard times.

Go through it in faith. Go through it in confidence. Because God is good and because He is good, you can rely on Him.

14:23

Embrace Jesus as Savior

And I do think there's also a thought in here that maybe for you today, if you do not know Jesus as your Savior, if I were to ask you the question like, hey, if you were to die today, do you know where you would go? To heaven or to hell?

If God were to ask you, why should I let you into heaven? If your answer is anything other than, well, Jesus, because of Jesus' payment for my sin, because I believe in Jesus, because Jesus is the one that I'm looking to.

I want to encourage you with these words from verse 29, how much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God? It is not Jesus plus anything else. It's not anything other than Jesus.

It's not your good works. The only reason that we can have a relationship with God is through the Son of God, through Jesus Christ. So don't trample on him.

Accept him. Embrace him. In the words of Psalm 2, kiss the Son.

Pay him homage. Realize that he is the basis of our relationship with God. So verse 29, how much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God?

So don't trample him. Kiss him. Love him.

Embrace him. Choose him as your way into heaven. Secondly, who has regarded as profane or ordinary, just something, meh, the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.

It says it's through the blood of Jesus that we have, through his sacrifice, through his death on the cross, that we have experienced, bought redemption. So don't look to your baptism. That water was nothing special.

The blood of Christ is something special. Don't view your money as something that brings you favor with God or a relationship with God. It's the blood of Christ that is precious and that has bought your salvation.

And then thirdly there, and who has insulted the spirit of grace. Notice there it doesn't say the spirit of law, the spirit of works, the spirit of anything else that you could put in there. It is God's Holy Spirit, the spirit that brings us grace.

By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not from yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, so that no one is able to boast.

So if you don't know Jesus, if Jesus isn't the reason why you would say, hey, here's why I'm on my way to heaven, then make the choice today. I'm going to believe in Jesus. I'm going to believe in His sacrifice on my behalf.

I'm going to believe that His shed blood bought my salvation. And I don't have to, He didn't pay 99% of the bill, He paid it all. And so I'm going to believe in His shed blood for my sin.

And then lastly there, the Spirit of Grace that I realize, God, this is a gift from You to me. And I don't have to earn it. I don't have to maintain it on my own.

This is something that You have accomplished. And so I'm going to spend my whole life believing Jesus is my reason for my walk with God. He's the reason that I know when I die, I'm going to heaven, it's because of Jesus and His work.

And I'm following Him, I'm repenting from sin, I'm believing in Him. But all of that is only because of what Jesus has done. And He's the only reason that I can possibly enter into God's presence.

Well, I hope today would be an encouragement to you, to continue in your walk with the Lord.

Know that hard times are going to come, but know that God uses it to make you a better person, so that you can share the Gospel, so that you can testify about God's goodness and His glory through what you have experienced in your trials.

And then believe in Jesus alone, and don't turn away from Him. There's no salvation outside of Jesus. Tomorrow, we're going to begin in Hebrews 11.

What's often called the Hall of Faith, where the author then turns to say, okay, you want to know what faith in God looks like?

Here are all of the examples from the Old Testament of people that had faith in the Lord, and how that showed how they had a genuine walk with God.

And so he encourages them, be like these people, have faith in God, and let your faith in Jesus be what determines your relationship. Thanks so much for tuning in today. And, pardon me, look forward to being back with you tomorrow.