Heb 6:9-12 Full Assurance of Hope

Hebrews 6:9–12 ESV

9 Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. 10 For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

For better or worse it seems to me that all financial transactions these days are only online transactions. When we access our bank accounts, we just see numbers on a screen, we bank our confidence on what we see on a screen as true reality. We live each day with great confidence that the financial institutions are telling us the truth. However, the truth that God tells us in this verse today is far greater and we don’t need to wonder if what we see here is true. Rather it will impact how we live each day, and we can bank our eternity on it with great confidence.

Hebrews 6:9 ESV

9 Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation.

After the most dramatic warning in this letter, the author of Hebrews now turns to the readers and calls them beloved. We might stop here for a minute and say, wait a minute why are you calling us beloved after giving us such a rebuke that makes every believer tremble? One might say that is not loving at all. However, even though it is hard to listen to passages like the one we studied the last time. They are the most loving thing God does for us because He loves us and as a Father, He disciplines us and tells us the truth that leads to life. It would be the most unloving thing for God to not give us warnings and just let us go astray and deceive ourselves and not examine our hearts and our walk. It is through warnings such as the one that we studied previously that God keeps us in His hands. Such warnings intend to remind us of the reality of what sin truly is. Kevin DeYoung says: “Sin is not simply a sad thing because it can wreck our lives. It is not just the ruining of shalom. Sin does more than make God sad that his world is not the way it’s supposed to be. Sin makes God angry. It is offensive to God. His wrath is aroused not simply because we’re missing out on his best, but because we have violated his law, rejected his Lordship, and made ourselves gods in his place.” “Godly grief recognizes the utter sinfulness of sin and hates it more and more. Godly grief produces true repentance, which leads to salvation (v. 10). [When we are at the center our repentance will be] obsessed over regrets and feeling bad due to the opinions of others. When God is at the center there is godly grief, which mourns for sin, turns from sin, and finds forgiveness for sin in Christ.” When God corrects and rebukes you what is your attitude? Are you still at the center and fighting for your own kingdom, obsessed over regrets and feeling bad because of what others might think of you or what you think of yourself, or do you mourn for sin and long to be with the Lord completely separated from sin and resting solely in the forgiveness that Christ provides? I know it was hard to digest what the previous passage had to teach us. However, it made me praise God for such passages, not because of the seriousness of the topic but because it causes us to strip away from our hearts any confidence that we might have in ourselves. At the same time, it reminds us of the only hope, which is Christ in us. It caused me to be undone, without any confidence in myself, and praise Jesus because “The Lord is the strength of his people”. The most glorious and amazing thing, worthy of praise in you and me is Jesus. I hope you were encouraged and came to the same realization of the worth of Christ in you. Of ourselves we are nothing, but with Christ we have everything. God says in Zephaniah 3:17 “he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” Why will God rejoice over us with gladness and sing because of us? It is because of Christ in us. Because Christ is changing us and through the Holy Spirit’s power and strength making us more and more like Christ. What a glorious and uplifting truth. That is why the author of Hebrews turns now to his hearers and says beloved. This is the first and only time this word is used in the letter to the Hebrews. It reminds us that we are beloved by the Father because He loves us, He disciplines and rebukes us, but never forget He loves us. No one ever loved us so much, no one else sent His Son to you while we were still sinners. Rom 5:6-11 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. What Paul just told us here in Romans 5 are the things that belong to salvation that the author of Hebrews talks about in v9 “we feel sure of better things- things that belong to salvation.” The author of Hebrews shows confidence that the case he described in the previous verses doesn’t apply to them. However, it seems like previously the author of Hebrews had little confidence in the hearers. At the end of chapter 5, he had just told them: “you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food” Then he gives the strongest warning that there is in this letter and followed by v9, where he says “we feel sure of better things”. We might ask: wait a minute, why is the author of Hebrews confident of better things for his hearers? He gives us the reason in v10, which says:

Hebrews 6:10 ESV

10 For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.

In this verse, we also have an insight into the lives of the believers to whom this letter was addressed. They had worked and shown love for God in serving the saints. This seems a little vague, it could mean anything. It seems that the author’s confidence in the salvation of the hearers doesn’t rely on specific external evidence but relies on the condition of their hearts, because they have shown love for God’s name. What does it mean to love God’s name? An example that shows the opposite is to look at our world. How often unbelievers will use God’s name in vain or as a cursing word? Not only is God’s name profaned, but God’s holiness is profaned almost instinctively by most unbelievers. Why is God’s name used in such a way? It is because in their hearts they hate God, so using God’s name for a curse is instinctive, and natural. If you love God, you will be bothered and offended when someone mistreats God’s name or use it for cursing. In the same way, you would be offended if someone would mistreat your spouse’s name or your parent's name. We live in a world where everyone is right upfront to tell how they are offended, I’m not saying that we should have this attitude, at the same time we should be bold and walk away from a movie, or a show that misuses God’s name. Furthermore, if others around us at work or somewhere else misuse God’s name we should tell them that it offends us because they are mistreating someone we deeply love. While this is straightforward and somewhat easy to apply. A more difficult and profound application of loving God’s name is to examine our hearts and see if we are living for God’s kingdom or if we are living for the kingdom of self. Paul Tripp says the following: “You could read your Bible every day and the entire Bible each year and still live for yourself. You could be faithful in your attendance at all your church’s scheduled gatherings and still live for your little kingdom. You could regularly place your hard-earned money in the plate and still not live with God’s kingdom in view. You could be expert in the theology of the Word of God and still shrink your life down to what you want and what you tell yourself that you need. You could participate in ministries to the poor and needy and still not live for the big kingdom. You could do all of these things, and the trajectory of your life could still be more toward the kingdom of self than the kingdom of God. Remember sin makes it all about ourselves, and we make ourselves gods in his place, we replace His kingdom for our kingdom and we try to make God the servant for our kingdom, instead of us rejoicing in being the servants for His kingdom. There are acts of righteousness that are not righteous because they don’t come from hearts of worship. True Christianity is always a matter of the submission of the heart to God, something that only rescuing grace can produce”[1] Do we love God and His kingdom more than we love ourselves? This is something that is only discernable between you and God… It is so easy for us to think that God is serving our plans and our wills. We might say no we don’t do that, however, when life doesn’t go the way we expected or hoped for, in our hearts we might doubt God’s goodness and His love for us. Why is that? It is because of sin. “Sin causes us to stick ourselves in the center of our world and make life all about us. It causes us to reduce the field of our daily concerns to the small agenda of our wants, our needs, and our feelings. Sin causes us to be driven by selfish desires, a spirit of entitlement, and a silent list of demands. Sin causes us to want our own way, to want sovereignty over things we weren’t designed to control, and to want to coerce others into the service of our agenda”[2] Loving God’s name is loving Him more than we love ourselves, it is submitting to His will even when it hurts. It is trusting in what He said and who He is more than what we see around us in this world. It is crying out to Him saying we don’t understand, but we will trust Him. It is saying what Job said, “The Lord gave and The Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) If you love God, your life will be centered around God, and everything in your life will be in submission to His lordship. You will seek to do everything for the glory of God, “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God”. Furthermore, you will obey God, not only because you love Him, but because you find the greatest joy to please God and enjoy Him forever. Therefore, if we love God, our lives will be a living testimony of our love and obedience to God. This is true for the first readers of this letter because we see the evidence of that later in chapter 10 where it says: Heb 10:32-34 32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. These believers were suffering because they wanted to follow Christ. The situation that is described is something like this. Imagine that I would be put in prison for daring to preach the Bible and call sin for what it is and wholeheartedly following Christ. The prisons during that time didn’t provide much of anything. Therefore, you want to visit me in prison and bring food and clothing. But going to visit someone in prison comes with the cost of being charged as an accomplice, thus showing love for one another would cost you your house, your car, and your savings, but you still go gladly for Christ’s sake. You DON’T do this because you are defending a cause, or anything else, but only because of your love for God, for His name. We will be able to persevere only if our hearts are devoted to God and we love Him more than we love our stuff and ourselves. Someone might say, this almost sounds like someone can be saved through their work, by giving all their possessions and their lives. By no means, by works of the law no human being will be justified. Everything that we do is out of love for God, and even our love we cannot brag as something that originated in us. 1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us. And Eph 2 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Therefore, all these works come through a heart of devotion to God, out of a love that He first put in our hearts. Confidence because of God’s Justice Returning to v10 the author’s confidence is the hearers' work and love that they have shown as we just studied. Furthermore, the author’s confidence is in God’s justice, it says “For God is not unjust”. Now, we would expect the author’s confidence in our salvation to be God’s mercy and not God’s justice or righteousness. When we think of God’s justice and righteousness we think of God's righteous act of judging and condemning sinners, giving people what they deserve. We recognize that if we get what we deserve we will receive eternal judgment, and we confidently stand not on our own righteousness, but Christ’s righteousness. “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil 3:9) However, there is something about God's justice or righteousness that causes the author of Hebrews to be confident that the readers will persevere in faith and patience and not fall away. I could try to explain this concept, but let’s hear from Piper who can explain it much better than I can. He says “God would be unjust and unrighteous if he ever acted in a way that belittled the greatness of his name. The name of God, or the glory of God, has the greatest value in the universe—greater than all material value and greater than all human value. So the greatest injustice in the universe is neglecting and dishonoring the name and the glory of God. So when verse 10 says that "God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name," you can hear what is at stake. His name is at stake. And the work he remembers is specifically the ministry to the "saints"—the holy ones, the ones set apart for God. So again what is at stake is God's name, his glory, and his honor. In other words, the justice of God looks at this ministry to the saints and this love to the name of God, and says: "What I see here is not a human performance that makes me a debtor and deserves the repayment of salvation. I do not see people calling attention to themselves and how valuable they are to God. I do not see people demanding a just recompense for good works. What I see is a needy people looking away from themselves to the all-satisfying glory of God—this is what it means to love God's name (verse 10). And I see hearts filling up with joy because of all the promises of God. And I see a people caring for the saints of God because they care about the glory of God." And because the justice of God is his unwavering allegiance to the glory of his own name, his justice says, "I will stand by those who look away from self and merit and earning, and instead look to God alone for acceptance through his Son and for the satisfaction of their hearts." (slow)The justice of God gives assurance because the justice of God upholds those who cherish the mercy of God above all things. The justice of God gives assurance not because it repays merit (which we do not have); but because it vindicates those whose faith glorifies God as more trustworthy than anything in the universe.” Let me say this again…The justice of God gives assurance because the justice of God upholds those who cherish the mercy of God above all things.

Hebrews 6:11–12 ESV

11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

God’s desire for us is to press forward with full assurance of hope until the end. “He wants you to feel strong and confident and secure and bold and ready to lay down your life for the sake of ministry and for the glory of God's name. He does not want you to tremble in fear and uncertainty about your future. He is calling us this morning to bank our assurance of hope on the mercy of God and the justice of God. The mercy of God to reach out to the utterly unworthy and give us faith and forgiveness; and the justice of God to uphold the honor of his name, magnified in the faith of his people.” I have great confidence in you and the future of our church, not because of us or anything that we can do, but because we want to exalt the name of Jesus, we want to glorify Him and magnify Him. It is God’s plan and desire to magnify Jesus. Therefore, we can have great confidence that He is going to build His church, His Kingdom and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. However, we cannot forget that God is not building our own little kingdoms of self, but He is building the Kingdom of God. Everything in the world is not about you, or me, it is all about Jesus, His glory, His name. Sin can easily make us shrink our life down to what we want and what we tell ourselves that we need. “True Christianity is always a matter of the submission of the heart to God, something that only rescuing grace can produce”[3] We can strive with great earnestness with full assurance of hope until the end. Imitating those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Not only because of the mercy of God but also because of the justice of God. “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6) Even our own salvation is not ultimately about us, it is ultimately to show the unmeasurable grace of God. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.