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Sunday, September 6
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  • If you have your Bible with you this morning, I invite you to open it with me to Hebrews chapter 10, beginning with verse 32.
    As we come to the final message in this three-part section, listen especially for the words remember, confidence, endurance, and faith. These are God's words to people who had already traveled a difficult road and needed to be reminded why they must keep going.
    Please follow along as I read Hebrews 10:32–39.
    Hebrews 10:32–39 CSB
    32 Remember the earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. 33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to taunts and afflictions, and at other times you were companions of those who were treated that way. 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. 35 So don’t throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you need endurance, so that after you have done God’s will, you may receive what was promised. 37 For yet in a very little while, the Coming One will come and not delay. 38 But my righteous one will live by faith; and if he draws back, I have no pleasure in him. 39 But we are not those who draw back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and are saved.
    The word of God for the people of God.
    Let us pray. Faithful Father, strengthen weary hearts through Your Word. Help us remember Your grace, endure present trials, and look toward the coming of Christ. Keep us from throwing away our confidence. By Your Spirit, make us people who live by faith and persevere to the saving of the soul. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
    Introduction: The Long Road Home
    Have you ever reached a point where every part of you — body, mind, and spirit — was simply exhausted?
    Maybe it was a season at work. The hours were long, the pressure never let up, and the paycheck did not feel like enough to justify the drain. You dragged yourself to the car at the end of the day, sat in the driver's seat, and did not want to turn the key. Not because anything catastrophic had happened. Just because the weight had not stopped, day after day after day.
    Maybe it was family. A child who would not sleep. A parent who needed care you were not sure you could give. A marriage that felt more like surviving than thriving. You loved the people in your house, but you had nothing left to pour out. The well was dry.
    Maybe it was a struggle no one else could see — a diagnosis, a financial hole, a grief that settled into your bones and did not leave when the funeral ended. You kept going because you had to, but you could not remember the last time you felt strong.
    There are seasons when the hardest part is not one terrible moment. It is simply that the road has been long.
    You have been carrying the weight for a long time. You have been praying for a long time. You have been waiting for a long time. And somewhere along the way, you realize that you are tired.
    That kind of weariness can reach into our spiritual lives as well.
    There are times when we begin the Christian life with great confidence and enthusiasm. We know what we believe. We know whom we have trusted. We are ready to follow Christ wherever He leads.
    But then the road gets longer than we expected.
    Prayers seem to go unanswered. Trials do not go away. People disappoint us. We suffer losses we never anticipated. And little by little, the question changes from, “Can I face this?” to something much deeper:
    “Can I keep going?”
    That is where the words of Hebrews become very personal.
    The believers who first heard these words knew something about a long road. They had begun well. They had suffered for Christ with real courage. Some had been publicly mocked. Some had stood beside fellow believers who were suffering. Some had even watched their possessions being taken away because of their faith.
    They had not abandoned Christ.
    But they were tired.
    And the danger was that weariness might slowly become retreat.
    So Hebrews does not shame them for being tired. And it does not simply tell them to try harder. Instead, God points these weary believers in three directions — and in each direction, He points them to His grace.
    Look back and remember what God has already done.
    Look around and receive the help God is providing now.
    And look ahead to the Coming One who will not delay.
    This is not a technique for self-salvation. The God who chose His people, the Son who purchased them, and the Spirit who gave them life also preserves them.
    Faith keeps moving because God is faithful, and the Coming One will come.
    The gospel does not merely call us to begin with Christ. It calls us to continue with Christ until faith becomes sight.

    I. Remember the Grace That Sustained You (vv. 32-34)

    Verse 32 begins, "Remember the earlier days." Memory is a spiritual discipline. The writer does not ask them to live in nostalgia or pretend the past was perfect. He asks them to remember evidence of God's grace in their own lives.
    After they had been enlightened, they endured a hard struggle with sufferings. Some were publicly mocked and afflicted. Others stood beside believers who were being treated that way. They sympathized with prisoners. They accepted the confiscation of property with joy because they knew they possessed something better and lasting.
    Their suffering was not theoretical. They lost reputation, comfort, safety, and possessions. Yet something had changed in them. They had discovered a treasure persecution could not take. Their property could be seized, but their inheritance in Christ could not be touched.
    The writer says, "Remember." Remember when the truth of Christ became more valuable than acceptance. Remember when you stood with another believer even though it cost you. Remember the prayers God answered, the sins from which He rescued you, the people He used to carry you, and the grace that held you when you did not think you could continue.
    We are often forgetful in two directions. We remember our failures and forget God's mercies. We remember the pain of the trial and forget the strength He supplied inside it. We remember what was taken and forget the better possession no one can confiscate.
    This is why Scripture repeatedly commands God's people to remember. Israel built memorials after crossing the Jordan. The Psalms rehearse the mighty acts of God. At the Lord's Table, Jesus says, "Do this in remembrance of me." Christian memory is not sentimental. It restores perspective by placing our present trouble inside the larger story of God's faithfulness.
    Perhaps you cannot point to a dramatic conversion or a season of public persecution. You can still remember. Who first taught you the gospel? When did a verse hold you together? When did God provide through His people? When did conviction lead you to confession and peace? When did Christ become more than a name to you?
    We do not build assurance upon the intensity of a past experience. Assurance rests objectively in Christ's completed work and God's promise, and it is confirmed subjectively by the Spirit's present fruit. Remembering former endurance does not replace looking to Christ; it helps us recognize that the grace which bore fruit then is still our only hope now.
    The phrase "after you had been enlightened" also keeps the warning of the previous passage close. Outward enlightenment and covenant privilege, considered by themselves, are not identical with regeneration. But in these hearers the writer recalls costly acts that are consistent with genuine faith, and he will soon speak of them as those who believe to the saving of the soul. He addresses them charitably, pastorally, and confidently without turning assurance into presumption.
    When present trouble makes God seem distant, remember the grace that has already carried you.

    II. Do Not Throw Away Your Confidence (vv. 35-36)

    Verse 35 says, "Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward." The image is not of confidence accidentally slipping from our pocket. It is something a discouraged person is tempted to cast aside: "This has cost too much. Waiting is too hard. I am finished."
    Your confidence is not confidence in the strength of your own decision. It is the bold access Christ purchased in verses 19 through 22: confidence that His blood is sufficient, His priesthood is permanent, His intercession never fails, and His welcome remains open to all who come through Him. The believer's grip may tremble, but Christ's covenant grip does not.
    Trials often attack precisely there. Suffering whispers that God has forgotten. Delay suggests that His promise has failed. Shame insists that we no longer belong. The world points to visible losses and asks what our faith has gained.
    The answer is not that Christians never lose anything. These believers had possessions taken from them. The answer is that what we have in Christ is better and enduring. We have forgiveness that accusation cannot revoke, adoption that suffering cannot cancel, a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and an inheritance kept by God.
    Verse 36 says, "You need endurance." We would often prefer immediate relief, a clear explanation, or a quick victory. God sometimes gives those gifts. At other times He gives endurance: strength for today, daily bread, enough light for the next step.
    Endurance is not passive resignation. It is active faithfulness under pressure. It keeps praying when the answer is delayed. It keeps worshiping when emotions are dull. It keeps obeying when compromise would be easier. It keeps loving when relationships are difficult. It keeps showing up to encourage and be encouraged.
    God ordinarily preserves His people through appointed means. He gives the preached Word, prayer, baptism and the Lord's Supper, gathered worship, the oversight of elders, mutual exhortation, and even the warnings of Scripture. These means do not compete with sovereign grace; they are instruments of sovereign grace. The decree of perseverance does not make endurance unnecessary. It guarantees that God will faithfully sustain His people in the path of faith.
    That connects this passage directly to the first sermon. "Do not neglect gathering together." Why? Because endurance is a community project. There are days when your faith will strengthen someone else, and days when another believer will carry hope to you. We hold fast together.
    Do not interpret your need for help as spiritual failure. A body is designed to have members that depend upon one another. Asking for prayer, counsel, or companionship is not weakness outside God's plan. It is often the very means by which He supplies strength.
    Endurance is not proving that we can survive without help. It is continuing to receive the help God provides in Christ and through His people.
    This is why the command is urgent without making salvation rest upon unaided human will. God commands us to endure, and God supplies what He commands. We act truly and responsibly, yet beneath our willing and working is the God who works in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

    III. Look to the Coming One (vv. 37-39)

    The writer first directs us backward: remember. Then he directs us forward: "In a very little while, the Coming One will come and not delay." Christian endurance lives between accomplished redemption and promised return. Christ has come to bear sin, and Christ will come again to complete our salvation.
    The phrase "a very little while" may not feel little to us. The church has waited for centuries. Some trials feel long even when measured in days. But Scripture measures time in light of eternity and the certainty of God's promise. The apparent delay is not forgetfulness. The Lord is patient, gathering His people, and He will arrive at the exact moment appointed by the Father.
    When Christ comes, no faithfulness offered to Him will prove wasted. Every hidden act of love will be known. Every tear will be wiped away. Every injustice will be judged. Every believer will be raised. The better and enduring possession will no longer be something we receive by faith; it will surround us in the renewed creation.
    Then Hebrews quotes Habakkuk: "My righteous one will live by faith." Habakkuk looked at violence, injustice, and coming judgment and asked how God's people could stand. God answered that the righteous live by faith. Paul uses these words to unfold justification: God declares the ungodly righteous through faith alone, apart from works. Hebrews emphasizes the persevering life that necessarily flows from that justification. We are not justified because we endure; we endure because the faith that receives Christ is living faith, and because God preserves those whom He justifies.
    The faith that receives Christ is the faith that keeps returning to Christ. It may be strong or trembling, mature or newly awakened. Its saving worth does not lie in its intensity but in its object. Even weak faith lays hold of a strong Savior. Yet living faith does not make peace with abandoning Him; when it stumbles, grace restores it, and it rises again to follow.
    Verse 39 gives the congregation a firm pastoral affirmation: "We are not those who draw back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and are saved." After the severe warning, the writer does not leave the church staring into itself for enough strength. He identifies them with the persevering people of God. This is more than optimism about human resolve. It is confidence that the Shepherd will lose none of His sheep and that His grace will bring them through faith to the saving of the soul.
    That confidence does not make the warning unnecessary. The warning is one of the instruments God uses to expose false confidence, awaken the careless, and keep believers watchful. The promise is another instrument by which He comforts and strengthens them. God preserves His people through both the command, "Do not draw back," and the assurance, "We are not those who draw back." Divine preservation and Christian perseverance are not rivals; the first is the ground and power of the second.
    We live by faith because the Christ who came for us is the Christ who is coming for us.

    Conclusion: Three Responses, One Christ

    Across these three sermons, Hebrews has placed the gospel before us and asked for a response.
    First: draw near, hold fast, and encourage one another. Christ has opened the way into God's presence, so come with faith, remain in hope, and walk in love.
    Second: do not turn away. There is no other sacrifice, no other High Priest, and no other Savior. Do not harden your heart against the Son of God or resist the Spirit of grace.
    Third: remember and endure. When the road is hard, remember the grace that carried you, receive the help God provides, and look toward the Coming One.
    These are not three different gospels. They are three responses to the one Christ. Faith comes to Him. Unbelief turns from Him. Persevering faith continues with Him.
    Where are you today? If you are outside Christ, come near through His blood. If you have only outward privilege and a borrowed profession, do not confuse nearness to the covenant community with union with Christ. If you are drifting, hear the warning and return while it is called today. If you are weary, do not throw away your confidence. Use the means God has given, ask the saints for help, and look to the One who promised.
    And if you fear that your faith is too weak, remember where its strength lies. The hand of faith does not save because the hand is strong; it saves because it receives Christ. Come with empty hands. The Savior who welcomes you is the High Priest who intercedes for you, and the Spirit who awakened faith is able to sustain it to the end.
    The road is long, but the destination is sure. The Coming One will come. And when He does, every mile of faith will prove worth it.
    Church, we are not those who draw back and are destroyed. We are those who have faith and are saved — not because our grip is perfect, but because our Savior is perfect; not because the road is easy, but because the destination is sure; not because we are always faithful, but because He who promised is faithful.
    Draw near. Do not turn away. Hold fast until the Coming One comes.

      • Hebrews 10:32–39CSB

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