Full Assurance

Even though we are speaking this way, dearly loved friends, in your case we are confident of things that are better and that pertain to salvation. For God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for his name by serving the saints—and by continuing to serve them. Now we desire each of you to demonstrate the same diligence for the full assurance of your hope until the end, so that you won’t become lazy but will be imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Today, we are going to see a little bit of a reprieve from the previous verses, where the author of Hebrews had been very stern in his warnings to them. He called them immature and lazy.

But in our passage today, we will see him soften his tone toward his readers. The author urges his readers to be diligent in the faith, that they may be sure of the hope of being with Christ. In previous sermons, we have talked about how Scripture states that we cannot lose our salvation. Today and in the next couple of weeks, we will see the author of Hebrews state that we can also know that we are saved. We can have an assurance of our salvation, knowing where the destiny of our souls is placed.

Big Idea: We can be sure of our salvation.

Hebrews 6:9

Even though we are speaking this way, dearly loved friends, in your case we are confident of things that are better and that pertain to salvation.

The author comes back from his stern warning to his readers about being stuck on spiritual milk and what it means to fall away, to bring some encouragement to them. He calls them dearly loved friends. There is a heartfelt affection for his readers.

He also states that he believes that his earlier warnings that he just gave to these Jewish believers will not, ultimately, be their fate, but that they are more likely on a trajectory toward salvation.

Some may ask, “If the author was sure of their salvation and that his warning did not apply to them, why did he give the warning in the first place?” This is a very common question, especially among theologians who are trying to understand this difficult section of the book of Hebrews. I have had to wrestle with this question myself as I study this book.

After a lot of study, reflection, and prayer, here is where I have landed on the reason for this warning: While the author can assume and believe that the group he is writing to is made up of believers, he cannot assume that every person among his audience is a converted follower of Christ. We looked at Judas last week as an example of this. He was one of Jesus’ chosen 12, performing miracles and proclaiming the gospel, and yet, he walked away from Jesus in the end.

A preacher that I deeply admire, named Paul Washer, once told a story of how he was invited to speak at a church for a special service. He was told it was going to be for a dedicated congregation that serves the Lord faithfully. Then the leaders of this gathering asked Paul Washer what he would likely preach on. And Paul said, “Well, I will probably preach on the gospel.”

The group leaders responded with, “But we just told you that most of these people, we know them to be very devout and sincere Christians.”

And Mr. Washer replied, “First of all, I appreciate that. But I can never assume that everyone there is truly Christian, or has come to a Biblical understanding of the gospel.”

He went on to say that the gospel is not just for lost people, but is also for Christians.

This is why I give a call to salvation in every single sermon that I preach. It is why I am continually proclaiming the destructive power of sin and the power of God through Jesus Christ, who overcame sin and death. That message is not just an encouragement to unbelievers, but is an amazing reminder to us all that we are in constant need of the grace of God to help us in this life.

When the author brought the rebuke in Hebrews 5:11, telling his readers that they had become too lazy to understand the basic principles of the faith, it was a challenge to those who may not have been fully committed to Christ, while also serving as a reminder and encouragement to the true Christians in this group to dig deeper into the Word, studying who God is and understanding what the Word says about the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Hebrews 6:10

For God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for his name by serving the saints—and by continuing to serve them.

Giving reason for this belief, the author tells of how the Jewish readers have shown great love for the saints of God and continue to do so as of the writing of this letter. The writer sees that their care for God’s people was because of their love for the name of God.

I have mentioned many times that our works are not what saves us. If you are trying to earn your salvation through your good works, you will earn nothing but judgment. However, the author of Hebrews points out to his readers that their good works of helping fellow Christians are because of their love for the Lord. He says that,

“(God) will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for his name…”

The author knows that what his readers have done in taking care of other Christians is not based on what they may gain from it, but is instead based on their love for God. They are serving others out of the overflow of God’s love in their heart.

Later on in Hebrews 10 (Turn with me there), we see the author specifically reference how his readers had cared for other Christians.

Hebrews 10:32-34

Remember the earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, 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. 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.

The Hebrew believers cared for those who had been persecuted for the faith, in some cases coming under that same persecution themselves, even to the point of having their possessions taken away.

Are we willing to take that kind of stand for others? Do we love God so much that we are willing to be ridiculed, yelled at, called hateful names, or even thrown in prison because we are standing for the truth and standing with others who are proclaiming the truth?

(Examples?)

Because God is just, the author says that God will remember what these Hebrew readers had done for the saints. God knows our hearts. He can see through the actions to get to the root of everything we do. And the author of Hebrews believes that the actions of his readers were based on their transformed hearts and love for God.

Hebrews 6:11

Now we desire each of you to demonstrate the same diligence for the full assurance of your hope until the end…

The author now says that he and his fellow believers desire and encourage the readers to show the same diligence towards the assurance of the hope of their salvation to the end. They had been diligent in serving others, as we just saw, but their knowledge of the Word had been lacking.

Their efforts in serving others had become their focus, and they had left the study of Scripture behind. Similar to this, Jesus pronounced a “woe” upon the Pharisees and teachers of the law because they were so diligent about outside appearances and neglected other parts of the law.

Matthew 23:23-24

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These things should have been done without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain out a gnat, but gulp down a camel!

The Pharisees were so diligent about tithing that they measured out the spices that they grew in their own gardens and gave a tenth of even their spices to the temple. However, Jesus points out that the Pharisees had neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Jesus told them that they should still have been faithful and diligent in tithing while also acting in justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

The Hebrew readers were being encouraged to continue serving the saints, while also being diligent in their knowledge of God.

In his article titled, “The Legend of the Social Justice Jesus”, Greg Koukl points out that there are people who claim Christ that say, “If you aren’t physically helping the poor with every need they have, are you even a Christian?” But as he works through his article, he goes on to show that, while Christ did tell us to take care of the poor, that we are not to neglect that as the Pharisees had, Jesus’ mission and reason for coming to earth was to save people from their sins.

When Jesus was anointed by Mary, the sister of Lazarus, Judas freaked out because the oil she used was worth a year’s wages. He tried to say that the oil should have been sold and the money given to the poor. (Mind you, Judas was in charge of the money for the disciples and was taking money for himself from the collection.)

Jesus responds to Judas by saying,

John 12:8

“For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Feeding and taking care of the poor is important. As Voddie Baucham used to say, “Don’t hear what I’m not saying.” We should feed the poor and take care of the needy. However, it is more important for us to seek and grow closer to God. If our relationship with God, our heart posture toward our creator, is not right, not fully submitted to Christ, helping the poor will turn more into taking care of people’s physical needs, and we will neglect the more important issue of caring for their spiritual needs.

The author also emphasizes that diligence is necessary as we grow in the faith so that we can be fully assured of our hope to the end.

I have spoken many times about the fact that we have work to do as followers of Christ. We don’t get an instant download of all theological truth the moment we submit to Christ. We do not live in the Matrix where someone can upload information to our brains, and now we know kung fu. This is why Philippians 2:12 tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We work out our salvation by studying the Word of God and its precepts, applying them to our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we will live according to God’s truth and not our own ideas of what we think should be true.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

If we want to be complete Christians, ready and equipped for the good works that God has prepared for us, we need to be in the Word of God. If there is something we want to know about God, we go to Scripture because it will teach us the truths of who God is. We may not realize that we need to be rebuked for something we have said or done, but when we spend a lot of time in the Word, we will see where we fall short of God’s glorious standard, and ask him for the forgiveness we need.

If you need to be corrected, or if you know that someone else needs some “kind” correction, the Scriptures will show us how to do that. If you want to know what it means to live as a righteous person, go to the Scriptures. This is our roadmap. This is the ultimate guidebook to life.

Another thing we can learn from Scripture is the assurance we can have in our salvation in Christ. I grew up in a denomination that disagreed with the idea of “assurance,” or as the more Reformed believers would say, “the preservation of the saints.” I grew up with that idea being pejoratively called “Once saved, always saved.” I was taught that if you ask Jesus into your heart, you are saved. But if later in your life, you walk away from the faith, acting like the devil, “once saved, always saved” can’t be possible.

Now, to give some credit to the denomination that I grew up in, part of this belief is that they take people at their word when someone says, “I gave my heart to Christ. I am a Christian.” But as we saw last week, Judas also claimed to be a follower of Christ, but walked away, denied Christ, and now is enduring eternal judgment.

Without actual heart change, there is no salvation

I grew up thinking that even though I thought I was saved and called myself a Christian, if I sinned by letting out a curse word when I was mad at one of my brothers, or by lying to my parents about finishing my homework, and the trumpet blast called with the return of Jesus, I believed that I would get left behind and not go to heaven.

I did not have a proper idea of Christian hope. In today’s culture, hope is just a wish or a desire to see something happen in the future, but never really knowing if it will happen. (i.e., I hope the Mariners will one day make it to the World Series.)

But that is not what Christian hope is…

Christian hope is trusting God to keep his promises.

As Christians, we trust that God will do what he says he will do. We believe that God is a promise-keeping God. We believe God to be “immutable”, which means that he will never change. God will not say one thing and then change his mind and say something else. Because of that, we can be sure of our salvation.

If there can be no assurance of salvation, there is no hope. I recently listened to the most recent episode from the Just Thinking Podcast. This episode was on “Political Islam.” One of the tenets of Islamic belief is that if you serve Allah, you will go to heaven. But the moment you make a mistake, the moment you sin against Allah, he can change his mind about you and never let you into paradise.

In this podcast, the hosts gave testimonies of Muslims who were asked if they knew for sure that they would go to heaven when they died. Every single testimony said, “I don’t know for sure.” According to the sacred Islamic texts, the ONLY way to know, absolutely, without question, that you will go to heaven is by dying as a martyr for Allah in an act of jihad.

Theologian Joel Beeke has a teaching series on Ligonier Ministries called “Assurance of Faith”. In one of the sessions, he uses an acorn to describe assurance of faith.

Is an acorn an oak tree?

The answer is, yes. While a fully grown oak tree is what we think of as mature, the seed of that tree is contained within the acorn. Everything that the tree needs to become a mature, fully grown oak tree is there, waiting to be released and watered, and grown so that it will reach its full potential.

We may start out in our walk with God with a zeal and excitement that feels like it cannot be quenched. It's like a seed that sprouts and grows really fast as it reaches through the dirt to get to the sunlight.

After a while, as we deal with the worries and trials of life, as the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, showing us our sin and helping us resist temptation, we become so aware of our sinfulness that it becomes all we can see. We start to wonder if we are even saved because we see how sinful we really are. This is a time of growth in the plant that we may not recognize because it isn't happening as fast as we would like.

But as we continue to grow in the faith by consistently reading the word, praying, coming to church to be encouraged by other believers, and encouraging them in return, we will grow in the assurance of our faith.

One of the best ways to cultivate assurance in our lives is to read Scripture. The Word of God shows us the truth of who God is and the truth of who we are in light of him. In writing to the Ephesian church, the Apostle Paul provides one of the many passages that tells of our assurance when he tells the Ephesian Christians that they can be sure that they are in Christ.

Ephesians 1:13-14

In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed. The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory.

When you submit to Christ, the Holy Spirit seals you, marks you as belonging to the God of the universe. A crude way of looking at this is cattle branding. The hot metal of the branding iron is pressed into the flesh of the cow, searing the skin and hair, putting a permanent mark on the animal so that anyone who sees that cow will know who it belongs to. When we are given new life in Christ, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. We belong to Christ and are sealed, or marked as such. That sealing cannot be undone.

Hebrews 6:12

…so that you won’t become lazy but will be imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.

The author states that if the Hebrews show diligence in the faith and in seeking the Lord, they would not be/become lazy in the faith. Instead, they will imitate others in the faith who inherit the promises of God through faith and perseverance.

Again, we are seeing this encouragement, or exhortation, to put in effort in following after Christ. We must be reading Scripture. We must be praying. We must be encouraged by, and encourage, other believers. That takes effort. This is why I have provided you with links to free resources of trusted teachers and ministries that can help to build you up in the knowledge and wisdom of the faith.

“Naivety is not a fruit of the Spirit.” - Darrell Harrison

(pause here) It is one thing not to know much when you are a baby Christian. Babies drink milk for a reason. They need the softer, liquid diet because their systems are not ready for solid foods. But just as the author of Hebrews told his listeners in chapter 5, some Christians are still drinking milk when they should be teaching others how to eat steak already.

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees and Sadducees what the greatest commandment was in Scripture.

Matthew 22:36-37

“Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

We are to love God in all three of these phases. When we are given new life in Christ, our souls desire to know Christ more, to love him more. There are Christians who have leaned too far into loving the Lord with their minds so as to not have any real emotion about the Word of God. We talked about them a little bit last week. They are intellectually convinced, but spiritually apathetic. They have head knowledge without heart change.

However, if we swing to the other side, and our relationship with God is based on our emotions and how we feel about God without the knowledge of the truth as revealed in Scripture, we cannot test ourselves to see if we are really in the faith or just emotionally captivated to spirituality.

We must love God with our heart AND our soul AND our mind.

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

We must wisely and prayerfully grow in the knowledge of God, being diligent in our study of him, diligent in our prayers, so that we can see what this world has to offer, compare it to what God has to offer, and know that he is the better choice.

Jesus told his disciples…

Matthew 10:16

“Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.”

The Greek word for “shrewd” is phronimos. It means to be practical or wise. The opposite of this Greek word is aphron (αφρων)(moral and amoral), which means to be foolish or ignorant.

Last week we discussed how the author of Hebrews was describing people who had once been “enlightened”, and we connected that to the Period of the Enlightenment, where there was a focus on mental reasoning. When we see Christ’s instructions to his disciples, he is telling them to be wise and discerning in their thoughts and actions, but to be sure not to use that wisdom deceitfully.

How many of you have that one person in your life that when you play a board game with them, they know the rules backward and forward, and so you can’t tell if they are explaining the rules completely, or just in a way so that they can exploit possible loopholes in the rules in order to win? How many of you are willing to admit that you are that person? That may be wise as a serpent, but it is not being as innocent as a dove.

Having the wisdom of the Lord to direct us in our lives will help us to endure the trials and temptations of this world. God’s wisdom helps us to persevere through our struggles because the wisdom of God tells us that he is faithful, he does not change, he will always provide exactly what we need when we need it.

Finally, the author tells his readers to imitate Godly examples. He calls this imitating others who are following the Lord part of our diligence in knowing God. In Philippians, Paul told his readers…

Philippians 4:9

Do what you have learned and received and heard from me, and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

He also told the Corinthians…

1 Corinthians 11:1

Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ.

Paul was an excellent example of being faithful to the Lord and serving him well. He was willing to confront Peter when he was treating Gentile Christians as if they were still to be considered “unclean” when Jewish Christians were around. He was put in prison by Rome for preaching the gospel. He was whipped by the Jews multiple times for preaching the gospel. Paul didn’t care what he suffered, he just knew that he had to be faithful to Christ.

This instruction from Paul has lead people to claim that Christians don’t follow Jesus, but actually follow Paul. On one of our YouTube videos, someone commented, “You worship Paul.”

But why did Paul tell us to imitate him? Because he was imitating Christ.

Christ is the ultimate example to imitate.

Paul didn’t tell his readers to follow him because he was so special. Scripture does not tell us to follow Paul for the sake of following Paul. He told his readers to follow him because he was doing his best to set an example of following after Christ. He told his readers in Ephesus…

Ephesians 5:1

Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children…

God is the one we are to be imitating. His love, grace, justice, mercy, and peace should rule in our lives to the point that it shows the world around us the truth of who God is. Our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers should know God by seeing our example of following after God, our example of carrying our cross like Jesus did, pointing them to a merciful Savior who can rescue them from their sins, giving them new life and a hope that they can be sure of for their remaining days in this life.

If you are here today and you do not have any assurance of where your destiny lies, you don’t know if you would be with the Lord or go to eternal judgment if you were to die today, you can have the assurance you have lacked. You can submit your life to Christ, be sealed with the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption when Christ returns. You can be sure that you will spend eternity with Christ when you repent of your sins and place your faith in Jesus Christ.

Next Step: I will repent and submit my life to Christ.

Let us pray.

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